Dell sues cybersquatters

However, Dell alleges that rather than dropping the domain names after the five-day grace period, the defendants moved them from one registrar to another without every paying for them.

Dell has also filed counterfeiting claims against the defendants arguing that typosquatting is tantamount to counterfeiting, according to the court documents. Dell is seeking at least $100,000 per domain name under the cybersquatting law or up to $1 million per name under counterfeiting laws.

"This is an interesting case," said Richard Stockton, an intellectual property lawyer at Chicago-based Banner & Witcoff Ltd. "In order to win under cybersquatting laws, you have to prove bad faith intent. But here when you have somebody who's registered 1,100 domain names all having Dell's trademark in them, it's pretty clear you're going to be able to get somebody for bad faith intent."

Stockton said Dell has a pretty good chance of winning this case, especially if winning is described as breaking up the domain-registering ring. "And I think part of this is the gig's up and Dell is willing to put the resources in to break this thing up, and I don't think the defendants are going to have the will or the resources to fight back," he said.

The defendants DomainDoorman and CapitolDomains have also been the subjects of a trademark infringement complaint filed by West Chester, Penn.-based Diamonique Corp. with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on July 24. Rather than file a lawsuit against the companies, Diamonique filed for arbitration with WIPO.

Diamonique alleged that by registering the domain names diamnoique.com and diamoniquw.com, DomainDoorman and CapitolDomains, respectively, were cybersquatting and therefore infringing on the company's trademarks.

In addition, Diamonique filed for arbitration against IHoldings.com, another of the defendants in Dell's lawsuit, with the National Arbitration Forum in December 2003. The domain name at issue in that case was diamoniquejewelry.com, registered with IHoldings.com, doing business as Dotregistrar.Com.

Diamonique prevailed in both arbitration cases and the domain names in questions were transferred to Diamonique.