Back In April of this year, we wrote about a guy named Alf Temme, who was in that report sued by Dell for $2.4 Million for typosquatting.
In a guest post to SeattlePI.com, Mr. Temme described why he started typo squatting, he business plan he built around it and how it all came tumbling down due to the trademark laws, The Lanham Act and the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).
You also might remember that Mr. Temme owns the company that sells the Romfab ROM exercise machine for over $14K per.
Basically Temme says he had a plan to offer consulting services to large company’s to point out typo’s of their trademarks and have the companies register them. What he found is when he pitched he services to company’s given them examples of they typo’s that he would recommend they register, they simply registered them on their own and never hired Temme. So Temme frustrated with this approach then started registering the domains first then offering them to the company if they hired him as a consultant.
Where I grew up if you grab something you have no right to own and then offer it back to the owner for cash and other compensation that’s called blackmail and in my experience most people and certainly Fortune 500 companies don’t react will to it.
Most of us learned in school that just because you think a law is unjust you can’t just violate it and if you do then challenge it in the courts as being unconstitutional. Don’t violate the law and then lay down when the lawsuits come flying at you.
Also if you have a business plan and the first responses you get to it are undefensable law suits, maybe you should quit after the first one rather than keep going down the same road.
You can read more about Mr. Temme on his own blog domainnamesquatting.com. (that isn’t a joke, its the name of his blog)
maybe, it could be legal if used only to show advertising, like in parked domain, but NOT to promote or sell products and services similar to the original website/domain
Who’s going to reg domainnamesquating.com? Oh the irony….
Mike – I met a young tech savvy guy who said there is actually a cottage industry around hacking into a company’s servers, and then approaching the company for a job based on telling them what you did … and then helping them upgrade their technology to avoid future hacks.
This reminds me of Alf’s angle. Can you imagine having your home burglarized, and upon arriving home, the criminal pops out and asks you to hire him so he can help you install a new alarm system?
Thing is, if you watch the drop at all you know how many valuable TM-related names are out there. It’s kind of an obvious jump to imagine that someone could turn finding them into a service. Thinking about it, after reading Alf’s story, I was wondering how he might have done if instead of just holding the names, he’d built a single page announcing his intention to hand them over. Something like:
Hello Microsoft!
As a domain marketing consultant, I specialize in helping companies locate and acquire valuable ‘typo’ domains related to their Intellectual Property. This domain a gift to you, by which to serve as an introduction. Please contact me at…
Could that have served his purpose, or do you think they’d have sent the lawyers after him anyway?
He definitely screwed up when he later parked them and then redirected them to his exercise equipment business. Now the lawyers want to ‘make an example’ of him and it turns out he’s got something to lose, including at least, sauna.com
But check out the comments–people HATE this guy and a lot of them would lump us all into the same category.
John
I think he biggest error is continuing on this path.
Its one thing to do it once and put up the page like you suggest aimed at Microsoft but after they sue you and you lose, then you do it again to the airlines and you lose again then do it again to Dell, well you get the idea.
You only get a first chance once
@John – the company already exists: http://www.markmonitor.com/
This article was clearly written by a bot; grammar mistakes in every sentence