Google Wins Copycat Domain Fight

The National Arbitration Forum, a group set up by ICANN to hear domain name disputes, has ruled in favor of Google in a case where a Russian male registered Web addresses similar in spelling to the company's name.

The search giant filed the complaint on May 11, claiming it had legal rights to four addresses which Sergey Gridasov of Saint Petersburg had registered in 2000 and 2001. Gridasov registered googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com with the site Joker.com.

Gridasov did not answer the arbitrator's calls to testify on his behalf.

Paul Dorf, the NAF official put in charge of the case, ruled in favor of Google saying that he had no evidence that Gridasov was not trying to interfere or take advantage of his domain's resemblances to the Google name.

According to the arbitrator, the sites were being used as ways to trick users into downloading viruses and spyware by redirecting them to malicious Web sites.