First in Domain Squatting Cases: Dell Charges Typosquatters as Counterfeiters

External Source

In further development of Dell's lawsuit, reported today on WebProNews: "Forget about trademark infringement; computer manufacturer Dell wants to make a statement in its lawsuit against domain registrars. A successful counterfeiting charge would entitle Dell to claim damages of up to a million dollars per violation, a substantial increase over the federal limit of $100,000 per domain infringement."

Update: Can Typosquatting Be Counterfeiting? Read Michael Froomkin's take on the story.

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Related topics: Cybercrime, Cybersquatting, DNS, Law

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Re: First in Domain Squatting Cases: Dell Charges Typosquatters as Counterfeiters Suresh Ramasubramanian  –  Nov 30, 2007 8:28 AM PDT

Prof Froomkin says that quite a few of the kited domains dont even look like a Dell website so it should be fairly hard to prove counterfeiting.

My reply on his blog:

Umm.. there's no shortage of fake rolexes in Shanghai night markets, that don't even look like a rolex.

The night market hawkers have names for these .. "fake rolex" is any old watch with "Rolex" printed on it, correct spelling optional.  A genuine fake is a fairly accurate (at least on the outside) knockoff of an actual rolex watch.

Rolex treats even the "fake" ones as counterfeiting .. not just the "genuine fakes".

--- so the claim just might fly. And this set of kiters go underground, close their shell companies and resurface under some other moniker.