How Russell Hobbs loses customers to cybersquatters

I went to check out a ‘Win’ mechanic that I saw on my morning muffins. I read the URL and accidentally typed in a mis-spelling. The correct URL is www.russellhobbs.co.uk/hovis but I typed russelhobbs.co.uk/hovis. This took me to a cybersquatted site containing links to Russell Hobbs, kitchen appliances, kettles, home appliances, coffee makers and espresso makers. rusellhobbs.com/hovis goes to a similar page, and russellhobs.com/hovis is also parked by a third party.

Russell Hobbs are losing customers to cybersquatters, and this damages both their brand and their business. They need to recover these domains, firstly by contacting the registrant of the domain and requesting that they transfer the domain name for no fee, and then by contacting the registrar of the domain name, requesting the same.

If this fails then they need to contact a Dispute Resolution Service Provider, who will sort it out for a fee of around $1,300.00. These are listed at ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The lesson here is that brands should register mis-spellings of their domain names, as well as registering their domains on all the TLD’s possible. This is basic rule of trademark protection, and should be combined with a continuing programme of online reputation management.