Freedom of speech cybersquatting to increase

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has declared that registering and using a domain name similar to that of an organisation and then to use it to protest against them, it's products or their services is acceptable.

In October, the WIPO processed a complaint by the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. Their complaint was that the website www.chelwest.com owned and operated by Frank Redmond as a website to highlight the poor treatment his daughter received by the hospital, was too similar to www.chelwest.nhs.uk and that chelwest was a part of their intellectual property.

However, WIPO ruled in favour of Redmond. Their reasons showed that Redmond was not using the site for commercial gain and his website looked nothing like that of the hospital's.

Erick Wilbers, acting director of the Arbitration and Mediation Center at WIPO said "that companies will increasingly lose domain disputes against individuals or groups that use them as a platform for critical speech against a business."

"These "freedom of speech" domain names, 'where a person has registered a company's name as a domain name to voice negative opinions about that company', are controversial, because the company's branding, and therefore intellectual property, is often used when choosing the domain name."

Often cybersquatters who buy domain names using an organisation's name or other intellectual property can use them to increase traffic to other sites or brandish them with moneymaking adverts. In cases where a domain name is in dispute, according to WIPO 83.72 percent of cases end with the domain name being transferred to the organisation.

"When deciding on freedom-of-speech domain names, however, Wilbers said that the panel's decision on the cases has swung both ways. He believes that the trend will increasingly be to allow these sites to exist."