Domain name infringers target names that deliver the most value. Don’t allow a cybersquatter to target your brand – instead, familiarize yourself with the tactics used by domain name infringers, and use that knowledge to protect your intellectual property. Recent research conducted by Corporation Service Company (CSC) into the most common terms used by domain name infringers can help you proactively identify and register important variations of your domain names and prioritize names that you need to enforce.

Major Findings from the CSC Research Team:

• Third parties commonly register the prefix “www” in conjunction with a brand name – for example, “wwwbrand.com”.
• Third parties commonly register the suffix “online” in conjunction with a brand name – for example, “brandonline.com”.
• Of 100 top corporate domain owners, 64% do not own these common variations of their primary domain names.
• Domain name infringers use 30 common terms to register infringing domains, 10 of which were identified in two independent research findings.
• Approximately 80% of third-party domain names containing the “www” prefix (“wwwbrand.com”) point to pay-per-click advertising sites.
• Of the domain names containing the “www” prefix owned by brand owners themselves, 67% do not point to a live Web site.
• Companies that do not own a variation of their domain name containing the “www” prefix or do not properly direct it to their Web site could lose 1% of their site’s traffic.

Background

Through 2009, companies and individuals had registered more than 192 million domain names. Although the growth in domain name registrations has slowed, 2009 registrations still represented a 15% increase vs. 2008.

With more than 700 domain name extensions available, an increase in internationalized domain names, relaxed registry requirements, and the upcoming launch of new gTLDs, many companies struggle with this question: “Which domain names should we own?” 

To register one brand name across all extensions, even with no variations, can cost a company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To help our customers with their domain name strategies, CSC set an objective to identify the most infringed terms for brand names. For example, common variations registered by domain name infringers include term + brand.com or brand + term.com.

Our research examined three data sets:

1. The Cyberscape research CSC carried out on more than 400,000 domains that contained brand names and variations
2. An analysis of Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) cases filed
3. 100 top corporate domain name owners

CSC researched the owners of the domain names in question, the content found on the corresponding Web sites, and how much traffic each site receives.

To download a full copy of CSC’s Domain Name Infringement whitepaper, please click here.