Never let facts get in the way of a good story. Sweet & Maxwell have gone on the warpath against cybersquatters saying that disputes over cybersquatting are at record numbers. They use the figures put out by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, claiming that WIPO âdecided on nearly 3,000 cases in the 12 months to July 2012, the highest figure since 2007,â according to a report in The Guardian.
The legal information provider says disputes adjudicated by WIPO âhit 2,944 in the 12 months to July 2012, a 6 per cent increase on the same month last year,â according to another report in The Independent.
But this is misleading. Domain name registrations are growing at an even faster rate, with total registrations across all TLDs in the year to the end of April 2012 growing by 23 million or 11 percent according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief. So on a disputes per domain basis, disputes are actually falling!
Country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) grew even faster, growing by 16.2 percent for the same 12 month period while the .COM and .NET gTLDs grew by 8.1 percent over the same period.
So no matter how you slice and dice this information, to say that cybersquatting has increased is misleading as the total base of all domain names has grown at a far quicker rate.
While not diminishing the concerns that online brand owners have over cybersquatters, and the cost they impose, this needs to be put into some perspective.