Variant Spellings

Well whether the person is cybersquatting or not is basically based on whether or not they are actually using the domain.

For instance, Google... they have numerous variations of their domain, but they all point back to Google.com... that's ok, and Same for redirecting WebberConstruction to WeberConstruction...

But if they are just buying them to sell them for profit, or other methods, then that is wrong.. and shouldn't be done.

Indeed and that's one of the reasons Parked Domains are used. One of the first thing we did after registering and trademarking our name, was to find all its common misspellings and variations with prefixes and such and also register those. Redirecting them all to open one and the same page is done in minutes literally...

The mentioned practises of typosquatting and cybersquatting can harm you only if you haven't protected your brand enough before starting your actual online presence. Thinking of that ahead can put such culprits into very serious legal predicaments.

I recall having a client contact me once, asking to close his hosting. The reason was he used the word "playboy" in his domain (it wasn't even some variation of their main site, their name was quite longer, it just included the word in it). So, cheeky ol' Mr Heffner found him and send a horde of lawyers after him :rolleyes2 And the guy wasnt' even trying to benefit from their name, he was just unaware that he was stepping in someone else's yard :shaky: So always be sure to know (or have someone know) what you're doing, so you can follow the proper procedures and avoid conflict.

P.S. Regarding the example in the original post, the particular words "Cologne" and "colone" depict a whole different area and variety of business ventures. It's as useless as squatting "colone" and "colon" (although not that funny :D)
 
it could also work to your advantage.

When i started i was selling computer ink cartridges under the domain the-ink-shop.co.uk and this is the name i used on the website. The site was making money, but not a fortune. 3 years after initially registering i got a letter from a solicitor in regards to a printing company called The Ink Shop and i was using their trademark, which as i was in a different field and i was using my domain name as the business name was false, but they would not take this and threatened court under the trademark act, which i knew they would never win, but could not be bothered with a long court case, so i told them i will stop using it and they could have the domains ( i had the .co.uk and .com) if they paid me £1,000. they refused, so i refused to give up the use of the name, then then come back with a figure of £600, which i accepted.
 
Having variants of your own domain name and having it so it forwards onto your main website would be OK as long as the domain reflects your trade name, otherwise you may get into the argument of cyber squatting.
 
It is better to be know for a positive than a negative, you may get more traffic from the latter, you certainly get more grief :(
 
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