People who register TM names and TM typos are stealing from us

[Focus]

Well, however you want to phrase it..I don't own any of them so I'm not the least bit worried personally..

 

[noelius]

I agree with you, but is the owner's business to protect also typos, not only the normal domain.

 

[Gerry]

those are all the domains you DONT want to own...

The scarey part is that first link is just a few days worth or discovery on just one parking service and only using a 60 word root search for typos.

Then there is the section of non-typos...straight up TM infringement.

This is a bizarre business to say the least.

On this very forum there are threads regarding TM, prosecution, and typo generator all at the same time.

As David Carridine's Kung Fu master used to say,

Choose wisely, grasshopper

 

[Poker]

As David Carridine's Kung Fu master used to say,
Choose wisely, grasshopper

I remember it a little differently from SNL:

Grasshopper: master, why do you call me grasshopper?
Master: because you look like a grasshopper, you are ugly

 

[katherine]

I agree with you, but is the owner's business to protect also typos, not only the normal domain.

So that means that business owners are supposed to register all possible variations and typos of their TM names in myriads of extensions, and if they don't they are guilty of negligence ? :?:

 

[Duckinla]

Typo squatting is not something that can be painted "good" or "bad" with a broad brush. On a micro level, it may very well be bad for the business that is being squatted, and may cost them in revenue and expenses. On a macro level, it is a very important part of the whole industry. It allows for lots of parking companies and lots of registrars, which create competition, drives registration down prices and drive up your revenue share. It also creates jobs and income that gets spent to give profits to companies. The excess traffic it creates allows more advertisers to get in the game at a lower price. This allows more companies to do business, creates a larger online economy...which in turn may very well benefit those business that are being hurt on a Micro level.

 

[Gerry]

Typo squatting is not something that can be painted "good" or "bad" with a broad brush. On a micro level, it may very well be bad for the business that is being squatted, and may cost them in revenue and expenses. On a macro level, it is a very important part of the whole industry. It allows for lots of parking companies and lots of registrars, which create competition, drives registration down prices and drive up your revenue share. It also creates jobs and income that gets spent to give profits to companies. The excess traffic it creates allows more advertisers to get in the game at a lower price. This allows more companies to do business, creates a larger online economy...which in turn may very well benefit those business that are being hurt on a Micro level.

Very good points!

And I think an added benefit is that some traffic from the typo parked landing page redirects to the manufacturer/service to begin with.

Some may view this the same as being an affiliate program, of sorts. But rather than a Pay For Performance model, it is PPC.

I think there are so many pros and cons to this subject from both a domainer's and TM holder's perspective.

 

[Duckinla]

I think there are so many pros and cons to this subject from both a domainer's and TM holder's perspective.

Whenever you look at large systems (internet, government, tax system, etc) it's easy to find individual situations or "trees" that can really make you angry. But sometimes you have to step back, look at the whole forest, and ask "does the end justify the means". Sometimes there are unintended consequences to removing the things we find objectionable from a system. Even something as repulsive as the Mob may, in some way, be good for the economy. Vegas would probably still be a patch of sand if it wasn't for their activities early on.

 

[Dave Zan]

So that means that business owners are supposed to register all possible variations and typos of their TM names in myriads of extensions, and if they don't they are guilty of negligence ? :?:

One can always reach that conclusion, even though no one's saying that at
all.

However, there's no enabling law of any kind empowering anyone to actively
enforce trademark rights of certain parties. Essentially it lays the burden on
the trademark holder to protect those rights.

OTOH, if you see a typo whose ad leads users directly to your website, isn't
that supposedly serving your purpose anyway?

 

[fatter]

I would think a percentage of users, the greater percentage would realize number one they typed the wrong address in, I usually no this within seconds and retype it if there is no parked site there. secondly if the page is loaded with competitors adds you may have just caused the brand to lose a sale possibly which may be minor or may be a luxury yacht. and third charge a company a fee for letting the person in the door to the business he was trying to get to anyway.If a error page appeared most would retype the right address and get there anyway.I am sure with all the litigation starting we will see more figures on how tm typos have cost companies big money.

 

[Duckinla]

I would think a percentage of users, the greater percentage would realize number one they typed the wrong address in, I usually no this within seconds and retype it if there is no parked site there. secondly if the page is loaded with competitors adds you may have just caused the brand to lose a sale possibly which may be minor or may be a luxury yacht. and third charge a company a fee for letting the person in the door to the business he was trying to get to anyway.If a error page appeared most would retype the right address and get there anyway.I am sure with all the litigation starting we will see more figures on how tm typos have cost companies big money.

Again, you are only looking at it from the micro level. You aren't seeing the greater good that may be created from it.

On a micro level, I don't think it's fair that the government takes money from me and gives it to those who are less successful than me, make worse decisions than me or often just don't care to work as hard as me. But on the macro level, one can argue that it serves a greater good, creates a stronger, healthier country, which in turn allows me to be even more successful.

 

[maroulis]

I know I will get a lot of grief from this but it is true. people who register TM/typos are hurting every legitimate domainer,
Ad dollars would be much more if advertisers actually got people from parked sites who were searching for there product 100 percent of the time. Heres an example Joesmo types in hbsc.com instead of hsbc.com and goes to a parked page with hsbc link on top for banking. HSBC paid 5 dollars for every visitor that google sends them only joesmo already has an account with hsbc and just wants to check his balance. I am sure advertisers see that there traffic is converting somewhat because of the legitimate parked sites where people are actually looking for a mortage or whatever. But now we see advertisers opting out of parking traffic for this reason. I am sure this happens millions of times each day.

congrats on your comments at Miami Herald... You are obviously doing the industry a lot of good by voicing your opinion....NOT!

http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=13209.1&nav=messages&webtag=kr-miamitm

 

[Gerry]

congrats on your comments at Miami Herald... You are obviously doing the industry a lot of good by voicing your opinion....NOT!

http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=13209.1&nav=messages&webtag=kr-miamitm

Nice find, M (I know, I said it).

Im quite conflicted with this statement:

The second thing that must be accomplished is an all out war on click fraud, nothing hurts domainers more financially then click fraud.

Click fraud as in B2B is much more prevalent, costly, and damaging to a company's bottom line than domainers making pennies by clicking on their own landers.

If Company A wants to outbid every one else for keywords at $18.00 per click to be ranked on Google #1, then all their competition has to do is click the hell out of that link and deplete the advertising budget in no time. 1000 clicks equals $18,000.00. Pay me, says Google.

Not on any given day or situation would I ever pay to be ranked. Period. Under no circumstances. I have one site that does phenomenal in the rankings on both Google and Yahoo and never paid a penny.

That type of fraud to me is much more costly in terms of business than domainers cheating on their own parked pages (which usually end up getting nailed anyways).

The more I look at your title, I am a little bewildered also:

People who register TM names and TM typos are stealing from us

I understand you think that if typos went away then, according to your claim

Ad dollars would be much more if advertisers actually got people from parked sites who were searching for there product 100 percent of the time.

I think that is quite an assumption. Ad dollars are what they are as people want to be indexed higher and willing to pay more for that ranking. That is the nature of competition.

Plus, from parked sites who were searching for there product 100 percent of the time. means what? to me it means if someone wants to go to Disney World, having the word Disney in the Domain name or even the mere mention of it in the keyword monitization could be violating TM. If this were true and enforced, then there would be NO additional traffic to the site. Does that make sense?

In essence, parked sites would be totally worthless to the TM holder, the merchant, domainers, and parking companies. The only true function would be for totally generic words and generic keywords...boring.

As Ducklina pointed out, there are micro and macro issues to this and there is no simple 1, 2, 3 formula. I am neither pro nor con on typos. A typo is a typo. One three letter word can could essentially have more than 17000 typos. Think about it...AAA is your company...Someone has AAB, AAC, AAD, BAA, SAA, ASA...are all those typos of AAA??? I guess I could claim they were.

 

[fatter]

I can see i am in the wrong place

 

[maroulis]

I can see i am in the wrong place

is it full moon or what?? Never seen so many people disassociate themselves w/DNF lately...

wow!

 

[Duckinla]

I can see i am in the wrong place

Why? In any arguement there are often a minimum of 2 reasaonble opposing positions. It's not unreasonable to say that TM's are bad. Clearly, that is the general view. But when you dig deeper and get a little more philosophical, you may just decide that TM's are good.

 

[CyrusL]

You are obviously doing the industry a lot of good by voicing your opinion....NOT!

I think trying to clean up the rampant illegalities is the best thing he could do for the industry. Lots of industries self-regulate or often ask for legislation and enforcement to legitimize them. Unfortunately, the domain industry isn't one of them.

 

[maroulis]

I think trying to clean up the rampant illegalities is the best thing he could do for the industry. Lots of industries self-regulate or often ask for legislation and enforcement to legitimize them. Unfortunately, the domain industry isn't one of them.

Thinking that your saint and above all other domainers is NOT a very productive way to project yourself Cyrus especially in a public newspaper where opinions are formed in the first 10 seconds of reading a stupid article...

cnet had another article 2 days ago essentially equaling domainers/spammers/cybersquatters & child molesters yet cnet owns child.com and a bunch of generics...

the PR fight is something which simply cannot be fought by one person, there are more appropriate avenues than voicing your opinion lin a newspaper....

 

[Gerry]

I can see i am in the wrong place

You may not be in the wrong place.

Start with the basics. Do you know what a TM is? Numerous and even sometimes hundreds of TM's can be issued at the same time. It is a trade mark, a mark, design, logo etc defining or identifying a brand.

So TM is not always the same thing. If I want to sell granny smith Apples and want to reg BakingApple.com, does that mean I am infringing on APPLE computer?

GiveMeMySpace.com...does that infinge on MySpace when that happens to be a term used for generations?

YAHOO!!! Mountain Dew...a 70's - 80's commercial. Who infringed on who? See, it is not black and white. I am pissed because I can not park my domain name Yahooisms because parking companies think I have violated a TM. This is a common southern term and even a dictionary word.

 

[CyrusL]

Thinking that your saint and above all other domainers is NOT a very productive way to project yourself

I didn't read any of that in Fatter's comment. Just seemed like an honest opinion to me.

I see this confusing dichotomy posted on DNF daily. On one hand, most people complain about bad press and misunderstanding of the domain industry. They want public recognition of valuable domain names besides trademark infringements. Yet on the other hand, there's a strict community protection of blatant cybersquatters. Then we all wonder where the bad press comes from and the cycle repeats.

Me? I wouldn't mind seeing things cleaned up. I think it'll be great for everyone's portfolio besides those loaded with TM names. Yes, there are some issues that need to be worked out, like where the traffic from TM names will go, but those are only questions of implementation rather than deal-breakers. I think everyone who wants to legitimize the secondary market and see it boom for years to come would have to reach the same conclusion.