World's second-richest man boots cyber squatter

In an international copyright showdown, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has won control of a website domain in his name after an Indonesian man had tried it to sell him for $55 million.

"Cyber-squatting" is the practice of registering a domain name relating to a high-profile person or brand and then refusing to release the domain to them unless they pay far more than the actual registration fee.

Some people use domain names as a form of investment, buying domains relating to generic words and phrases in the hope that a business will want to buy them in the future. And for some businesses, the investment in a good domain is worth the extra investment.

Cyber squatting does not generally refer to registering a "good" name in this fashion, but to claiming a name that should rightfully belong to someone else.

Slim, who is worth around US$68 billion, brought this case before United Nations’ copyright agency, the World Intellectual Property Organsiation (WIPO), claiming that www.carlosslimhelu.com contained his name and should therefore belong to him.

The WIPO arbitrator ruled that the domain had been registered in bad faith and must be transferred to Slim.