Ebay Memorabilia, Celebrity Names Rush

With the recent deaths this week of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, eBay and domain forums have been crowded with domain name squatters trying to profit from them. 

Cyber Squatters are domain name speculators who register domain names and try to profit off a trademark or likeness of a company or person. This can include simply selling the domain name or having ads on a site using the domain name. Reselling to newbies often occurs withou the new domain names owners understanding the legal limitations of what those names can be used for.

A Free Public Trademark Search using a government run site USPTO.gov. Click Trademarks, Search TM database (#3), New User Form Search (Basic), type in the term and click Submit Query. Doing a search for Michael Jackson, there is a Live Trademark since 1993.