Cybersquatting cases hit record in 2008
Companies and celebrities ranging from Arsenal football club to actress Scarlett Johansson filed a record number of “cybersquatting” cases in 2008 to stop others from profiting from their famous names, brands and events, a United Nations agency said on Sunday. Web sites in dispute in 2008 included references to Madrid’s 2016 Olympics bid, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), Yale University, Research in Motion’s Blackberry as well as Arsenal and Johansson, and company names such as eBay, Google and Nestle.
The founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday the names system had become mired in politics and commercial games. “It would have been interesting to look at systems that didn’t involve domains,” Tim Berners-Lee, who drafted a proposal 20 years ago that led to the Web, told an anniversary celebration. Gurry said his U.N. agency was working with ICANN, a not-for-profit corporation based in California, on “pre- and post-delegation procedures” to check the proposed new suffixes and help avoid future litigation.
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