There are quite a number of lawyers that have found out that going after "domain squatters" (as they call it) is quite a profitable business because it is similar to ambulance chasing and requires relatively little and quite inexpensive research for them to find the "offenders". These lawyers then offer their services on contingency (for free) to the "injured parties" (the companies whose typo-squatted domains are involved).

In my case I had registered 7 DELL typo domains and I had pointed them directly to a Dell affiliate website that would pay out a small commission when sales were actually made as a resuilt of the affiliate redirect. The total commissions paid out to me were less than $4000 total.

Apparently a lawfirm in Chicago by the name of Loeb&Loeb trawls the internet for such "domain ambulance chasing" and has hammered quite a few domainers with hefty lawsuits. As mentioned above, this lawfirm apparently offers its services for free to the companies whose typo domain names were registered by domainers. Then they send out a simple demand letter to the "typo squatter". The demand letter requests the immediate turning over of the typo domains plus a demand for an immediate payment of a fairly large amount of money to "compensate" the "injured" company for damages and for legal fees incurred for the legal costs of recovery of the domain names (in my case the demand was for $15,000). Loeb & Loeb claims that they sent out such demand letter twice but I never received the two demand letters that were allegedly sent to me. I don't doubt that they were sent by Loeb & Loeb (lawfirms usually send these types of documents via FedEx or other such signature required service). The reason why I probably was not aware of the letters is that when I am absent from my office or on travels, my mail piles up and is put in a box that I then go through upon my return (looking in that box after I had received the lawsuit still did not turn up the letters). I only became aware of the letters when the lawsuit Loeb & Loeb filed in Austin Federal Court did reach me via personal service by a process server that tried 3 times to serve it persionally on me while I was not in the office and then according to the process seving rules was allowed on the fourth attempt to leave it with one of my employees who turned it over to me. When I was made aware of the first failed attempt of the process server, I told my employees that they should tell the process server to just give it to my employees if I again would not be present. But that apparently is not permitted under the California rules for serving legal Court documents.

So after reading the lawsuit I called lawyer Daniel Frohling at Loeb & Loeb to tell him that he could have the 7 typo domains because defending a lawsuit in Austin Texas Federal Court would amount to a lot of money and lots of time and because of the Lanham Act it would be a difficult thing to win. Lawyer Frohling advised that there were the damages to be paid as well and that settlement of the case would now require $50,000 instead of the $15,000 that was demanded in the 2 demand letters. Sounded like extortion to me.

I cannot by the life of me believe that it is Michal Dell's objective to have the Dell Computer company involved in this kind of legal racketeering. I believe, but I might be wrong, that lawyer Frohling or someone else in his office must have contacted the intellectual property legal department of Dell and offered his services for free to obtain these 7 typo domains for Dell. And quite likely this kind of offer to any company is routinely accepted by the lower level decision makers in the legal department of such larger companies because there is no cost attached to these offers. So then Loeb & Loeb and many other such lawfirms in the country go to work and send out demand letters with a deliberately large monetary demand that they expect not to be asccepted by the "typo squatters" (of which I am a member) and then they can proceed with filing a lawsuit in a venue (place) that is exceedingly inconvenient to a defendant ( in my case I live in Los Angeles and the suit was filed in Dell's hometown of Austin, Texas, a place where it would be hard to find a decent defense lawfirm that has not done business for the largest employer around Austin (Dell) and would be very expensive for the defendant if he were to want to defend the suit). To answer the suit alone to request change of venue would not help much because Dell has no doubt covered all the judges in Austin with "campaign contributions" and you would never get the change of venue.

Because of the no-win situation and the belief that the Court would award a reasonable judgement I did not answer the lawsuit but a few days after having been served with the lawsuit I did make the 7 domains available for transfer to Loeb & Loeb. They accepted the tranfer offer and transferred the domains a couple of days after into the name of another Loeb & Loeb lawyer, Nathan J. Hole.

With the 7 typo domains now wholly under their control and out of my posession they blithely proceeded with their lawsuit and requested an even larger judgement by falsely lying to the court that the 7 domains were still in my posession, which they clearly were not. They asked for and received a judgement of over $125,000 plus a gag order on me not to elaborate about the suit and the verdict. Rather strange behavior for the Dell company or Micheal Dell who should hold the Constitution with its free speech amendment in high regard. Since the lawsuit and the verdict are a matter of public record, I expect that my elaborating about it could not be cause for Dell to insist on the court to uphold the gag order. I will display the entire legal papers with the verdict received from the Austin Court on this website.

Meanwhile Loeb & Loeb has requested a transfer of the judgement to the State of California in which I reside (which transfer no doubt they will get) so that Dell can go after my assets (home, bank account etc.). Not a very good public relations move by Dell since I have been purchasing thousands of dollars worth of their servers and since I will need to purchase vastly greater amounts of servers in the future for an ambitious online yellow page venture www.usyellowpages.com .

The reason why I listed the typo domains under my own name with clear address and contact identification, and not in some offshore nebulous address, is because I wanted to find out what kind of economic havoc the Lanham Act would create with a free market economy and to what extent it would help large corporations to stifle competition and to consolidate their monopolies. Of course I had no expectations of such legal racketeering done in the name of one of these large corporations. But the stifling effect on competition and the negative impact on the American economy is undeniable, such as I explain in a website on that subject. The American government should not aid the large corporations in their monopolistic anti-competitive activities because it hurts free enterprise and the economy as a whole and the general public by preventing competition and competitive products to challenge the large monopolies.

As much as "typosquatting" may be seen as a somewhat cheesy activity, the fact is that it is no different from an investment in vacant land adjacent to a rapidly expanding city or business such as Disneyland for example, with the intent on giving Disney competition with some cheap motels that syphon business away from the Disneyland Hotels.

Squatting is the wrong term here anyway because squatting refers to occupying property not owned by the occupying party. The legal profession cleverly uses that kind of slanderous and derogatory nomenclature to diminish the standing of defendants in lawsuits that challenge the rights to ownership of domains. The lobbying efforts involved in establishing the Lanham act and later the strengthening of that act under the Clinton administration, were all made by monopolistic large corporations that wanted to disallow small individuals and small companies entry into their markets. These large monopolistic interest groups pursue the strengthening and maintaining of their monopolies by any means available (legal and illegal means). Governments at any level should not aid the corporations in perpetuating and indeed strengthening their vicegrip on the economy at the expense of all small businesses and of course at the expense of all consumers. On the other hand, governments should not punish corporations either for being successful when they do not directly harm other businesses. Clean and fair competition in higher quality and better service should always be acceptable.

Competition drives economies toward excellence and toward advantages to the buying public. Monopolies stifle competition and depress economies. Filing lawsuits on small individuals and small companies is the major practice with which large gorporations kill their small competitors and drive them out of business or out of the country to China and to other foreign countries where businesses are protected from the avarice of the legal profession.

Lawyers driving small companies out of business and pushing manufacturing abroad are the major causes of the economic decline of the USA. The end of this ongoing process is not in sight because few if any legislators dare to raise the subject and aspiring legislators cannot hope to be elected on a platform to protect small business against the predatory practices of large corporations. The election campaign funds come primarily from large corporate donors.