Google should use its own technology to defeat typosquatting, says lawyer

Ben Edelman is the lawyer behind a law suit against Google over typosquatting. He claims that Google should pay out $1,000 per domain name that infringes other people's trade marks 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.

"You may be familiar with the 'did you mean' feature where Google looks at what you request in a Google organic search box. Google can recognise that when you type in Bank Ofd America into Google that you're actually trying to get to Bank Of America and they will say 'did you mean Bank of America?'," Edelman told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio.

"We think Google should use a similar good faith analysis to get to the bottom of what the user was actually trying to do and to compare that with a list of well known trade marks as the law requires in order to avoid using these domains that are infringing on trade marks in famous names," he said.

Edelman claims that the very lowest possible estimate for how much Google earns in advertising commissions from ads on typosquatted domain names is between $32 million and $50 million.

Typosquatting is the practice of registering domain names that are close to existing, popular domain names, usually with one or two character differences. They display advertising to people who end up on the pages by mistake and earn money when those ads are clicked on.

Edelman's case is that by supplying advertising to those pages, Google is in breach of the US Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.

"It says that for any domain that is identical to or confusingly similar to a TM or famous name do not register, do not traffic in and do not use those domains," he said. "Certainly Google uses the domains. Google contracts to have its ad shown, to have its ads shown exclusively, that is definitely a kind of use, so we think Google breaks the law, and that really trumps the rest of it."

Google said in a statement that: "the claims are entirely without basis and we are vigorously defending ourselves."

Edelman, who is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, said that he hopes the case will be granted class action status this autumn. The lead plaintiff in the case is Vulcan Golf.