Own typos of popular domain names and think the worst case scenario is getting slapped with a UDRP? Think again.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against a Chicago jeweler accused of diverting typo traffic from competitors. The lawsuit charges the jeweler with violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The lawsuit seeks a civil penalty of $50,000 and additional penalties of $50,000 for each violation found to have been committed with the intent to defraud.
It’s hard to estimate the extent of “typosquatting” but people are paying big bucks for typos of popular web sites. MySpace.com is a favorite target. Just this week the domain MySpac.com sold for $31,600 and MaySpace.com sold for $9,300. Mypsace.com sold for $35,100 a week ago.
There are a number of software tools on the market for finding typos that get type-in traffic. One of the more popular tools is sTypo. sTypo automatically generates potential typos of domain names and then checks their type-ins at Overture.
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