by: Reena Richtermeyer, associate at Jackson Walker L.L.P
In response to the growing problem of "cybersquatting," the U.S. House of Representatives recently joined the Senate in passing the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Included as an amendment to the "omnibus" appropriations bill sent to President Clinton on November 19,1999 the legislation amends the Trademark Act of 1946 to make it illegal for a person to register an internet domain name in "bad faith" with the intent of selling or otherwise profiting from a domain name's similarity to a trademark owned by someone else.
A cybersquatter is a person who pays a nominal fee to reserve an internet domain name only to resell the name at a sometimes enormous profit. Such schemes are successful because companies know that, from a marketing perspective, it is critical for them to have internet addresses that web users will intuitively associate with their company name or products. Consequently, the domain names that are
