Basel Labs

Registering a domain name with malicious intent or in bad faith is popularly called Cybersquatting in WWW. This is usually done for monetary reasons whereby one books a domain similar to a registered trademark or copyright of any known company and then tries to sell it to the concerned company at an exorbitant price. For example, if one registers a domain nike.net and then attempts to sell it back to Nike, it is cybersquatting. It will be in addition a violation of law if he/she puts up a website on nike.net describing Nike products and services in bad taste. On the other hand, if someone own a company trademark like Nike Foods and host a food website on nike.net, there is no cybersquatting or violation of law. So, it is the intention and not just the name which amounts to cybersquatting.

Cybersquatting was made illegal by the passage of a federal law in 1999 known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. The law became necessary because numerous large companies were forced to pay large sums to buy their domain names from third parties. These companies included such notables as Panasonic, Fry’s Electronics, Hertz and Avon.

Cybersquatting is quite common specially against the popular brands but most of the time, the victim company doesn’t know about it. How do you know if a company is a victim of cybersquatting? Type in a name that is a trademark or copyright like Sakshay preceded by “www” and following by “.com”, “.net” or “.org”. If you get a valid web site which looks like it is related in some way to the domain name, then there is no cybersquatting in effect (although this could be a simple trademark violation). However, if you get one of the following results, then this could be a cybersquatter.

- Can’t find server

- under construction

- page with no relationship to domain name

Of course there could be a reasonable explanation for each of these results, so they do not always mean there is cybersquatting occurring. It’s a good idea to contact the domain name owner before taking any legal action to find out what’s going on.

Since there can be many reasons both in favor and against cybersquatting in any specific case, how can one prove someone is cybersquatting?

- The domain name registrants intention was to profit from your domain name in bad faith

- Your trademark was in effect and widely known at the time the domain name was registered

- The domain name is identical to your trademark

- And you have actually registered the trademark

How do you know there is a bad faith intent? Well, there is probably no bad faith intent if one of the following is true:

- domain name is the same as the person’s name or nickname or company providing services or products in different domain.

- They are actually selling or intend on selling something on their web site - They have registered the domain prior to your trademark registration and have been using the domain name for some purpose or other.

- Does the web site owner actually have a legitimate use of the domain name? This would be, for example, true for a company named “Nike Foods”. They would have a legitimate reason for owning the “Nike” domain name.

Some clues that cybersquatting is occurring include:

- The domain name owner has put up a web site which in some way harms your company. For example, if you had somehow purchased “TATA.ORG” and created a web site about how inferior are TATA products, you are cybersquatting.

- If the domain name owner never legitimately used the domain name and simply offered to sell it to you, he is cybersquatting. If a person buys up a lot of names and has sold them over and over, there is a pattern of cybersquatting.

- If the domain name is the same as a very famous trademark, then it has a greater likelihood of being considered cybersquatting.

What can happen if someone is found guilty of cybersquatting is they can be ordered to hand over the domain name. In addition, if the domain was purchased after 1999, they can be ordered to pay monetary damages.

Domain name makes an Internet address of your web site that is why it has to be easy to remember and to type, it has to be representative and correspond with your web site. In other words it has to be effective.
To make it to be this way I’ve prepared a couple of tips for you when choosing an effective domain name.

Make Your Domain Name Representative.

In order your domain name to be representative, make it to be accordant to your web site name. And make your site’s name also be your URL. As your web site visitors will remember it by its name. So when they decide to return to your site again don’t make them wonder what the URL to type in their browser to get to the site they need.

There is another problem when the web site’s name and its URL spelled differently. Imagine your web site’s or the company’s name is, for example “MySuperBusiness” but some other company has such URL. The visitor who remembers your web site by its name would naturally type mysuperwebsite.com in his/her browser and will get to your competitor’s web site. And it would make a loss for you.

There are thousands of domain names are registered every day and that could be a problem for you to get the one you want.

In case you are just starting out it would be more comfortable for you to register a domain name first and name your web site only after you did that. And if you have a promoted brand name and don’t want to change it only because the domain name that fits you is already taken by someone else you can check its owner through the “Whois” to see who owns it. And you can purchase it from its present owner.

Make Sure Your Domain Name is of Optimal Length.

In general domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. There are a lot of disagreements about of what length the domain name is better to be.

A short domain name advantage is that it’s much easier to remember and it’s less compliant to typing mistakes.

A long domain name is usually easier to human memory instead of the one that was made short by all means. If it was, for example, replaced with its abbreviation it would be much easier to remember the complete meaningful name than the combination of letters and numbers that might have no sense.

So I guess it would be a perfect choice for you to use as short domain name as possible but only on condition of it remains meaningful.

Try not to use any symbols that carry no important information like slashes or hyphens. As it’s very easy to forget them when typing your URL.

Choose the Right Domain Extension.

Choosing a domain name extension depends on what exactly your activity is. In case it is of local scales, like pizza delivery, you can take a country- specific domain name. You also get in a good position with such domain name as the people your activity is targeted to know that they are dealing with a local entity.

The most common types of domain extensions are .com, .net and .org. These domain extensions are for your use in case you are planning to benefit from the international activity.
There are some domain names that require from the registrant to represent a certain type of entity such as .edu, which is reserved for universities or high schools, .aero, .biz, museum and some others.

So as you can see it is vitally important for you to get your own domain name. And it would be better if it corresponds with your activity and the web site’s name. But the bottom line of the article is that you sure should purchase you own domain name.

More hosting articles you can also find here Web Site Hosting Reviews- http://www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com Web Hosting Review - http://www.web-hosting-review.net and Cheap Web Hosting Directory - http://www.cheap-web-hosting-directory.com .

www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com“> www.web-site-hosting-reviews.com
www.cheap-web-hosting-directory.com“> www.cheap-web-hosting-directory.com

Creating a website is not just about designing your pages and including all the important information, it is also about creating a domain name that relates to your products and services and that is also easy to remember and spell for your customers. A domain name that is easy to remember will have more return customers and more word of mouth advertising than domain names which are hard to spell, remember, or both.

When it comes to searching for a domain name, all you have to do is go online and search for ones that you are interested in to see if they have been taken or not. There are hundreds of sites that will let you search domain names in hopes to sell you the domain name and then get you to buy their web hosting services as well. To start your domain name search, however, you should follow a couple of basic steps.

* Come up with a variety of domain names you are interested in. When you have a variety of unique domain names, you can start searching to see which of them are available.

* Don’t set your mind on one particular domain name. The reason for this is most common domain names are taken, so you will need to be creative.

* Make a list of general types of domain names you are interested in and start searching.

* Stick with a .com, don’t opt for .tv, .biz, or any other suffix if at all possible especially if that exact domain name is taken as a com. You will end up losing business to that site.

Now that you know some basic steps to follow for searching your domain name and choosing one, you need to understand how important it is to choose a good domain name rather one that has some other meaning that customers will not understand. For example, you might want to make a domain name up of all of your children’s names, while this is very sweet it has nothing to do with your services and will be hard to remember. Instead, choose something that has something to do with your business and services that is short, sweet, and easy to remember. By doing this people will be able to remember your web address and visit it often. If you do not follow these suggestions, obtaining brand recognition will be difficult if not impossible. People will not remember how to get back to your website because your address was either too obscure, too difficult to remember, or just too long.

If you follow these suggestions you will end up with a URL that will lead to long term branding for your website and products and since this is your business, this should be what you are after. Keep this in mind when you are tempted to name your website after your childhood nickname or long lost pet!

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

The registry of ru-domains reports, that the number of domain names registered in Russia’s national domain, the ru-domains, has increased 19.82% in the first half of 2004 to 256.356 ru-domains.

Ru-Center compares this to the growth of 2003, which was 16.02% for the first half of 2003.

The increase among ru-domains in Russia is coincident with the rising numbers of Russian Internet users. Ru-Center explains, that the weekly users numbered 5.9 million June 2004 , 1.4 million more than one year earlier. The number of Russian Internet users is expanding 30% a year.

ICANN accredited registrar Secura is accepting registrations of ru-domains by non-russian enterprises and private people. According to the experience of this registrar, the ru-domains owned by foreign registrants is growing rapidly (https://www.domainregistry.de/ru-domain.html).

About The Author

Hans Peter Oswald
CEO
ICANN accredited Registrar Secura

http://www.domainregistry.de/ru-domain.html; secura@domainregistry.de