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more brandnames pirated than owned?



STUDY: Majority of Fortune 500 Have More of Their Domain Names Pirated than 
they Actually Own

'Name Engine 500' Study Shows Massive Brand Dilution Within Fortune 500

NEW YORK (March 2) - In a study released today by NameEngine, the 
Internet's premiere domain name search and registration company, figures 
show that cyberpiracy exists to a much greater extent than previously
thought.

In the first study of its kind, the NameEngine 500 Online Value Protection 
Index shows that 265 of the Fortune 500 companies own fewer of their own 
domain names than have been registered by other parties, and that only 163 
of them actually own a majority of the registrations of their own name.

Domain names, such as http://www.company.com , offer companies a memorable 
and easy way to steer customers to their offering and to extend their 
brands across the globe through the Internet.  But even though many 
companies spend enormous sums promoting their brands online, they have done 
a very poor job of protecting them.

"I was shocked," said Antony Van Couvering, President of NameEngine, the 
company that authored the study.  "When we undertook the study, we expected 
to find plenty of infringing registrations, but the magnitude of the 
problem took us by surprise.  To me, there's a real disconnect when 
companies spend millions promoting online brands that they don't even 
control. "


The study was conducted by querying all the top-level domains around the 
world, including the popular .com, .net, and .org domains as well as 
country-code domains, and then analyzing the results.  As an example, 
American Express, which has an extensive worldwide presence, had registered 
the domain name "americanexpress" in 19 countries, while in 11 others the 
name is registered to someone other than American Express.  In a more 
extreme example, CBS has 4 registrations, but others have 46.  Even more 
disconcerting is that both of these companies are at risk in over 200 other 
countries where the names have not been registered at all.

"On average, a registry charges about $50 to register a domain name," said 
Van Couvering, "but anywhere from $10,000 to over $3 million to buy it back 
from a cybersquatter or pirate.  Protecting a brand on the Internet isn't 
necessarily easy, but it is manageable.  There are companies who have
expertise in this area and can easily cut the risk.  A very simple 
calculation shows that it's at least 200 times cheaper to prevent than to 
cure."

Some of the best protected companies in the Fortune 500 include Intel, with 
104 registrations of their own compared to 4 registered by other parties; 
Dell, with 91 to 11, and Goodyear, with 79 to 9.  Rounding out the bottom 
of the NameEngine 500 are CBS, with 4 registrations of their own compared 
to 46 registered to others; Times Mirror, with 1 to 41, and Merrill Lynch, 
with 5 to 36.

NameEngine will offer any company, without charge, the same worldwide 
search and analysis used in the NameEngine 500 survey.

The full results of the NameEngine 500 Online Value Protection Index can be 
found at http://www.nameengine.com/500 .

About Name Engine:
Based in New York City and Maryland, Name Engine is the Internet's Premier 
Domain Name Search, Registration, and Protection Company.  Founded by 
Antony Van Couvering, former head of NetNames USA, Name Engine's mission is 
to help protect the online brand identity of businesses on the web 
today.  Name Engine is located at http://www.nameengine.com .