Hey Cybersquatters, Register This!

Rooting for a large corporation in a lawsuit goes against every fiber of my being, but I'm glad to see telco giant Verizon last week won a huge case against one of the sleazy companies that makes money by taking advantage of confused web surfers or those who mis-type a site URL.

From internetnews.com:

Telecommunications giant Verizon has won a record $33.15 million judgment against Internet domain registrar OnlineNIC for cybersquatting.

The judgment, which Verizon described as the largest ever in a cybersquatting case, was handed down by the U.S. District Court in the Northern district of California in San Francisco.

OnlineNIC had registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to, or confusingly similar to, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) trademarks, and the court concluded that this had been designed to attract people trying to access Verizon's Web sites.

Well, I'll give OnlineNIC some credit for creativity; coming up with 663 names to exploit Verizon's trademark is pretty ambitious.

Verizon says it's the fourth cybersquatting case the company has won in the past two years. Good luck collecting, though:

While OnlineNIC is registered in San Francisco, it's evidently led Verizon a merry chase, and its physical headquarters still has not been located. The company did not show up in court to contest the case, which was awarded to Verizon by default.

OK, that's enough cheering for a corporation winning a lawsuit, especially a company which cost me a couple hundred dollars this year by messing up a requested change to our rate plan. But that's another blog post.