Microsoft scored a notable victory Wednesday in the war on so-called “cybersquatters” — the folks who set up websites with URLs that are just a typo or two different from those of popular sites. Seattle federal district court Judge Ricardo Martinez issued a nine-page opinion allowing Microsoft to proceed with what he called “a novel cause of action for contributory cybersquatting.”
Microsoft, represented by Mark Parris of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, filed suit last April against two companies, Digispace Solutions and yMultimedia, after they allegedly induced others to register domain names that allegedly included Microsoft trademarks or misspellings of some of Microsoft’s brand names. The URLs, with such names as download-msnmessenger.com, led users to sites where visitors who clicked on a link for MSN Messenger were sent to a site controlled by the companies or to “Smiley Central,” where they were asked if they wanted to download emoticon products.
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