Cybersquatting
registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else
Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting) is the practice of registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name, with a bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The term is derived from "squatting", which is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent, or otherwise have permission to use.
Terminology
In popular terms, "cybersquatting" is the term most frequently used to describe the deliberate, bad faith abusive registration of a domain name in violation of trademark rights. However, precisely because of its popular currency, the term has different meanings to different people. Some people, for example, include "warehousing", or the practice of registering a collection of domain names corresponding to trademarks with the intention of selling the registrations to the owners of the trademarks, within the notion of cybersquatting, while others distinguish between the two terms. In the former definition, the cybersquatter may offer to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
Similarly, some consider "cyberpiracy" to be interchangeable with "cybersquatting", whereas others consider that the former term relates to violation of copyright in the content of websites, rather than to abusive domain name registrations.
Because of the various interpretations of the term, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in a 1999 report, approved by its member states, considered it as the abusive registration of a domain name.
Legal resolution
International
Since 1999, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has provided an administrative process wherein a trademark holder can attempt to claim a squatted site.
Trademark owners in 2021 filed a record 5,128 cases under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Arbitration and Mediation Center, eclipsing the 2020 level by 22%.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cybersquatting” as registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q862581. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2021 and 2020.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Cybersquatting”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Cybersquatting primary sources, Cybersquatting archive and Cybersquatting research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Cybersquatting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.