Harry Potter and the Order of the Typo

Popular author JK Rowling has won her case at the World Intellectual Property Organisation for the control of two domain names.

The domains kjkrowling.com and www-jkrowling.com have been awarded to her after being registered by Alvaro Collazo from Uruguay.

Rowling's complaint stated that visitors to the sites were "bombarded" with pop up advertisements that had nothing to do with Harry Potter.

"The declared intent of the respondent, revealed in other cases of typo-squatting where the respondent was involved, was to earn money from registering special domain names," the judgement stated.

"Taking into account the fame of the complainant's mark, the use of the disputed domain names and the respondent's pattern of conduct, the panel finds, on the balance of probabilities, that the disputed domain names were registered and used in bad faith."

Typo-squatting is the deliberate registering of domains that are similar to famous brands but slightly misspelt, often by picking the letter next door to the correct one on a standard keyboard.

If a user makes a mistake in the URL they are redirected to the typo-squatter's site, either to drive traffic or display adverts.

Collazo declined to offer any defence or evidence of good faith and has now lost the sites.

See also:

Harry Potter spells profit for spammers

Junk mail campaign offers 'free' copy of latest book  07 Feb 2005

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