A domain-name squatter who specializes in misspelled celebrity and company names got a sound thrashing from a federal judge who found him guilty of illegally attempting to profit from the typographical errors of unwitting Internet users.
In a ruling in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Judge Berle M. Schiller ordered John Zuccarini -- a Pennsylvania man who has registered thousands of domain names and been the defendant in several domain-related suits -- to pay more than $500,000 in damages in a lawsuit filed by retail chain Electronics Boutique.
Schiller found Zuccarini guilty of violating the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 when he registed domains that included the trademarked name "electronicsboutique.com" or misspelled versions like "electronicbotique.com."
Zuccarini's actions, the judge wrote, displayed a "bad faith intent to profit" by using a domain that was identical or confusingly similar to a distinct or famous name.
"I find that Mr. Zuccarini specifically intended to pry on the confusion and typographical and/or spelling errors of Internet users," Schiller wrote in the decision, adding that "the profitability of Mr. Zuccarini's enterprise is completely dependent on his ability to create and register domain names that are confusingly similar to famous names."
It wasn't the first time Zuccarini's domain collection was dragged into court by a large corporation.
Other cases with similar charges have been brought against Zuccarini by Radio Shack, Office Depot, Nintendo, Hewlett-Packard, the Dave Matthews Band, The Wall Street Journal, Encyclopedia Britannica, the distributor of Guinness beers and Spiegel's catalogue, among others.
In early October, Yahoo won 50 domain names from Zuccarini, many of them based on misspellings of its trademarks, in a ruling from a U.N. arbitration procedure.
In the Electronics Boutique, Schiller also took Zuccarini to task for using the domain names he registered to deluge Internet users with ads through a marketing practice known as mousetrapping.
An accidental visitor to one of Zuccarini's domains would be subjected to a barrage of advertising windows for credit cards, games music and other product pitches.
The technique is called "mousetrapping" because an Internet user can't get an ad to go way without clicking it. Simply clicking the "x" in the top right-hand corner of the screen to close it won't allow a user to exit.
For his part, Zuccarini collected an estimated 10 to 25 cents for every advertisement a user clicked on.
Zuccarini could not be reached for comment. In proceedings before the court, however, the ruling said he admitted that he earned between $800,000 and $1 million annually from the thousands of domain names he has registered.
