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Typosquatting, the practice of registering misspellings of trademarked brands in order to earn money from the typo traffic, has become a relatively big problem, especially since domain tasting got so popular.

California-based venture CitizenHawk launched a new product called “TypoSquasher” that should make it possible for TM owners to find misspellings of their trademarks and domain names.

The service worked quite good when I used the demo version on their homepage. It shows possible TM infringing typo domains and where they are parked.

According to a press release, online retailer Overstock.com, Inc. is one of CitizenHawk’s first customers. “Using TypoSquasher, we’ve already identified and removed affiliates from our program who were infringing on derivations of our brand URLs,” said Jake Bailey, affiliate program manager at Overstock.com. “Before utilizing this service, we had to find all the infringements on our own. TypoSquasher is the only solution that allows us to discover and deal with our ‘fat finger URLs’ in one place.”

The TypoSquasher service is definitely a useful tool for TM owners to protect their brands. But one must be careful that the public does not get a wrong impression of the domain industry and domain investors, because it is still a widely spread misunderstanding that all domain portfolio owners earning money from domain parking are cybersquatters. They are not. Only domain registrants owning domain names infringing on other companies’ trademarks are cybersquatters or typosquatters.