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Brand Owners Could Have Prevented $220M in Domain Name Recovery by Spending $1M

Brand Owners Could Have Prevented $220 Million in Domain Name Recovery by Spending $1 Million

Corporation Service Company^® (CSC), the leading domain management and brand protection company, announced today the findings of a recent study they carried out on trends of disputed domain names. The results indicate more than $220 million (£133 million) was spent on reclaiming domain names from third parties through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). If brand owners had registered these domain names proactively, it would have only cost them $1.1 million (£600K), yielding a cost savings of $219 million (£132 million).

Brand owners can use the analysis to help them prevent cybersquatting in the future by understanding the trends of third parties. The findings indicated that the most popular prefix for disputed domains was "www", with more than 54% of the top 200 filers claiming against names such as wwwmybrand.com. More than 36% of the top 200 filers claimed against names with the suffix "online" such as mybrandonline.com.

Of the domain names that were won and handed back to the brand owner, almost 4,000 have been subsequently lapsed and are now available for registration. Also, an additional 3,000 domain names were lapsed after they were won and then re-registered - in some cases, by third parties. In fact, CSC found that several companies have disputed the same domain name up to three times because they continued to allow it to lapse.

The analysis included all cases filed between January 2000 and May 2009 with the two major UDRP providers, including the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The research covered UDRP cases covering more than 45,000 domains, of which brand owners managed to recover 85% of non-cancelled disputes.

"It isn't possible to completely eliminate the risk of cybersquatting; however, our analysis shows clear brand infringement patterns which can help avoid the unnecessary cost of going to UDRP," said Robert Holmes, Director of Accounts with CSC. "Our research helps brand owners identify these patterns so they can prioritize domain name registrations for the future and reduce the risk of infringement."

To learn more about this research and how to combat cybersquatting, brand owners can join a free Web seminar on August 26, 2009. To register for the web seminar or to request additional information about the report, please visit www.cscglobal.com.