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Calls to identify typosquatters

Publish date: 05 November 2008
Issue Number: 1258
Diary: Legalbrief eLaw
Category: Domains

Google should use its own search engine technology to identify typosquatters and cut off their advertising income, a US lawyer says.

He said that Google had the technical know-how to tell typosquatted domain names from genuine ones. Out-Law.com notes that Ben Edelman is the lawyer behind a lawsuit against Google over typosquatting. He claims that Google should pay out $1 000 per domain name that infringes other people's trademarks and earns advertising income. Edelman is seeking a US court's permission to launch a class action suit against the advertising and search giant that could cost the company billions of dollars. Edelman claims that the very lowest possible estimate for how much Google earns in advertising commissions from ads on typosquatted domain names is between $32m and $50m. His case is that by supplying advertising to those pages, Google is in breach of the US Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Full Out-Law.com report

Meanwhile, Google has reached an agreement with book publishers and authors that clears the way for both sides to more easily profit from digital versions of printed books. The agreement, under which Google would pay $125m to settle two copyright lawsuits over its book-scanning efforts, would allow it to make millions of out-of-print books available for reading and purchasing online. The New York Times notes that it outlines the framework for a new system that will channel payments from book sales, advertising revenue and other fees to authors and publishers, with Google collecting a cut. The deal goes some way toward drawing a road map for a possible digital future for publishers and authors, who were worried that they were losing control over how their works were used online, as the music industry has. The settlement would have the greatest impact on the millions of books that were still protected by copyright but were no longer being printed. Full report in The New York Times

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