Both registrations are examples of typosquatting – the practice of registering internet domain names that are misspellings of famous brands or names.
Rowling complained to the domain name dispute service of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) when she discovered that Alvaro Collazo of Colonia in Uruguay had registered the domains in May this year.
Both domains link to web sites that state "This domain is registered at Dot.Registrar.com by a customer and parked temporarily. To contact the owner of the domain name ... please email: [e-mail address]." But users visiting the sites are, according to WIPO, also bombarded with pop-up ads for goods and services unconnected to Dot.Registrar.com.
In a decision published today, the arbitration panel found that Collazo had acted in bad faith in registering the sites and ordered that they be transferred to Rowling.
It was perhaps helped in its decision by the fact that Collazo has previously had actions brought against him for typosquatting by, most notably, Expedia ("expediua.com") and the Bank of America ("bankofamericq.com").
Some of these cases had revealed, according to the panel, Collazo's declared intent to earn money from registering special domain names.