Seattle Trademark Lawyer

The World Intellectual Property Organization says cybersquatting is on the rise.

Last year, trademark owners filed 2,696 arbitrations under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, up 26% percent over 2009 filings. That’s saying something, since 2009 represented a 16% increase in WIPO filings over 2008.

In 2000, WIPO had 1857 domain name cases involving 3,760 domain names. Ten years later, the number of filings increased by almost 1,000, involving 4,370 domain names.

Retail trademark owners represented the largest category of filers at 9.67%, followed by banking and finance at 9.31%, and biotechnology and pharmaceuticals at 9.26%. Surprisingly, the smallest category of filers were trademark owners in the luxury items category.

It’s not terribly surprising to me that cybersquatting has spiked, though it’s been a while since I’ve dealt with it in my practice. At least at the UDRP level. It’s just gotten too expensive to prosecute those cases unless there are big dollars tied to the outcome. And, frankly, UDRP proceedings can be a crapshoot.