How to Get Ownership of a Cybersquatted Youtube Account
Here’s a guide for anyone looking to gain ownership of their company-named Youtube account, if it has been pilfered by a socialsquatter. The only thing you’ll need is a registered trademark. If you don’t own one, you can stop reading right here :) or, continue on for your own amusement!
In past articles, I’ve spoken about the bastards that are known as cybersquatters, and how they not only go after domain names that either are exact to or similar to an existing company name. I’ve also ranted about their little bastard cousins known as “socialsquatters” who perform the same acts with user names on social networking accounts. One of the most devastating social networking account user names to not own as your exact company name is Youtube; therefore, I stress the importance of getting the account name back on any of your businesses that will be doing video promotions.
Contacting Youtube to Report a Squatter
Much like contacting Google, it’s really hard to figure out how to contact Youtube. They make you jump through hoops if you click the “contact” link. In short, you’ll never find it through there (believe me, I’ve tried for a half hour once) – you’ll just get dragged through pages and pages of FAQs and other nonsense. If you’re looking to dispute a cybersquatter that has registered Youtube.com/YourName, you’ll have to do it through the Youtube Legal Issues Form. As the form says, this is the best way to file a claim; better than doing so by snail mail or fax.
Click through two descriptive pages, then click “trademark” from the link list, and you’ll get to the form itself. Here, you’ll have to fill out the trademark owner’s name (hopefully, that’s you), address and contact information, along with the ID# of your registered trademark. When describing the issue at hand, you’ll really want to play up the fact that this name has been intentionally cybersquatted. Mention your company’s life span. Hopefully your company has been around before the cybersquatter took your user name…otherwise, you might run into a roadblock. State the date that your trademark was registered, and when it was first used in commerce. Explain that this account is causing “commercial confusion” with the public. In other words, people are assuming the account in question is the official Youtube account of your company, when it is not.
At the end of the form, be sure to state that you want the account to be closed AND handed over to you. Otherwise, it will be gone forever, and that defeats the purpose.
If Youtube reviews everything and it all checks out, you’ll receive an email stating that the account has successfully been transferred and a temporary password has been assigned. This is the part where you can start doing the Cabbage Patch.
Above: The email confirming Youtube's transferal of a cybersquatted account to me.
The more of these things you have on your side, the better your chances of getting your username back will be:
- You own the registered trademark of the word, and it’s a “made-up” word (i.e., ‘Flarg’ instead of ‘MotorcycleVideos’)
- The socialsquatter hasn’t done anything with the account beyond registering the user name, making it blatantly obvious that the intent was to squat it
- The account you’re trying to gain ownership of was squatted a long time ago, and the account has no activity on it in months or years
What If You Don’t Own a Registered Trademark?
If none of this was helpful to you because you only have a lowly “implied trademark,” it’s never too late to register a trademark for your online presence. Seriously, the benefits far outweigh that $500 fee, especially when fighting these cybersquatting pricks! It’s really easy to do, too. I did it on my own, but services like Legalzoom’s online trademark service will do all of the grunt work for you.
If the Youtube username you desire has been taken by a squatter, or someone who registered it years ago and has never logged in since then, you’re out of luck. Youtube never releases squatted or suspended usernames – EVER…even though they claim that it happens within 6 months of the action taken. The only way to get one is to register a trademark, be patient through the registration process (usually 1 full year) and attempt to write Youtube using your trademark serial number as your saving grace.
Otherwise, you can always resort to “Youtube.com/mysitedotcom” (note the “dot com” spelled out at the end), I’ll promise not to make fun of you, though.
Tags: cybersquatting, socialsquatting, youtube
What if i own a registered trademark, but the user that uses it is Active?
A rift in in the space-time continuum happens? :D That would definitely be a question for a lawyer. I know that the active user would fight for “first use in commerce,” although it might be more difficult for them to prove since you actually got the trademark.
XD. Okay, and how long it has taken when you sent the Trademark claim? Less than a month?
Okay Pixelrage, they have sent me a message that “they have no grounds to take action on my claim” What did i typed wrong? Any advice, or could you give me any tip how to tell them that it belongs to me?
Do you have a registered trademark? If not, they’ll never pay attention to you, I’m afraid :(
Yes, i do. I have sent them a claim by link, gave them Registration Number and First use in commerce date yet they still said that they “do not find grounds to take action on my claim, and that “YouTube is not in a position to mediate trademark disputes between users and trademark owners.”. They also said that i should PM the user, but he is a name waster so there is no sense in doing that. What should i do then :( ? How to convince Youtube to believe me?
Here’s what you should do – send a Cease & Desist letter via email to the owner. If they don’t respond in a week, send a Cease & Desist to Youtube once more. There’s no way they can ignore it. It might have been the way they were approached – if you simply write and say that the name belongs to you, they probably won’t listen, but if you get more “legal,” they’ll pay more attention to it.
I have sent them Serial Number, Registration Number, First use in Commerce and said them that this person is a Cyber-Squatter and hasn’t logged in since 4 years. WTF i did wrong they’re not believeing me?
I also said them that it’s causing “Commercial Confusion”, and that people are assuming this is official account of us, while it’s not.
THEY STILL REPLY ME THE SAME DAMN THING :S
Pixelrage, could you give me an example on how to write Cease & Desist letter to Youtube? They allow only 300 symbols max. so it would be hard to try and contain everything in this. I need your help in this =/
Sure thing, you can definitely write a very brief one easily. Just cover these points. Write it in MS Word and keep checking your word count, and trim words here and there until you’re within character limit:
- Make sure it’s entitled “Cease and Desist” because that is a very serious term that cannot be ignored.
- State that your well-established, trademarked brand name is being infringed via a user account on their site. (It helps if this is actually a true statement, otherwise they might not “buy” it). Include your trademark serial #.
- State that you believe this is causing “commercial confusion” as a result.
- If the person using this username has been inactive for a long time, it’s a big feather in your cap.
- Ask them to rectify this situation by a specific date (30 days is commonplace) in the form of handing this username/account to you, or you will be taking further action.
Okay, i’ll test it out and tell you the results.
THE F***
Im getting so tired of it! I send them Cease and Desist and they still reply me the same spam crap:
“Thank you for submitting your complaint. As a preliminary matter, please
note that YouTube is not in a position to mediate trademark disputes
between users and trademark owners. As a courtesy we have considered your
claim, but do not find grounds to take action on your claim. If you have
continued concerns, we encourage you to resolve the dispute with the
uploader. You may be able to contact the uploader through YouTube’s
private messaging feature. Instructions on how to use this feature can be
found at the following link:
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=57955.”
OMG What the hell do i need to do for my trademark. I have did everything that you said and they still send me the same message all the time >_>
Crap, that’s not good. When was the last time the account holder logged in? You can try to send the account owner a C&D. Let a week go, then write Youtube back and basically say that you took their advice and attempted to contact the infringing user, but got no response. At that point, there’s no much else they could expect you to do. Not sure why they’re being so stubborn…
Last time he logged on was 1 year ago.
And i have feelings…..that it may be a Bot responding :S ?
Hmm…1 year is certainly a LONG time of dormancy and Youtube is giving you an unusually hard time over what should be considered a dead account :( The one I fought was a 1 year old account as well.
I’ll try it once more soon :(
YES! It worked! THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP MAN! =] !!
Thank you for this article. I just filed a trademark infringement claim on an account name for my organization. My 300-character description (rendered generic) was:
Intentional cybersquatting. User obtained acct on MM/DD/YY; no visits in 3yrs, no activity or uploads. Attempted contact MM/DD/YY; no response. COMPANY NAME. was incorporated in YYYY. US trademark reg’d since YYYY. Also hold reg’d trademark in Canada since YYYY: Registration ########.
It seems they have a new, trademark-specific form (or maybe my desperate search of their labyrinthian help site just wasn’t able to find it without your link.
I’ll let you know if my claim works. Thanks again.
Thanks for this article! Based on your advice and links here, I submitted my claim on December 15 and re-acquired the account in question on December 24. Merry Christmas to me!
The company I represent had a trademark registered in both Canada and the USA, and since their form only allowed for one, I included the Canadian one in the info.
Here’s my 300-character description, anonymized, if it helps anyone else going forward.
Intentional cybersquatting. User obtained acct on xx/xx/xx; no visits in 3yrs, no activity or uploads. Attempted contact 11/2/10; no response. COMPANY NAME was incorporated in YEAR. US trademark reg’d since YEAR. Also hold reg’d trademark in Canada since YEAR: Registration #XXXXXX.
I have just received the same standard message from YouTube, finding no grounds for the trademark infringement. My problem is that I cannot find the cybersquatter on YouTube, since they have not uploaded any videos, just set up an account. Any ideas on how I can find them via YouTube?
The best way would be to contact Youtube and let them know that you are unable to contact the cybersquatter – the complaint would basically have to be filed directly toward Youtube itself. Hopefully their department will take action. In these cases, they would theoretically attempt to contact this person. If THEY are unsuccessful in doing so, then the next step could be you getting a hold of that account.
I just took ownership of a cybersquatted account; the dispute was successful in part because of the advice in this article and comments, so THANK YOU!
Here’s the message I sent:
“Intentional cybersquatting. User obtained acct on 10/23/2007; no visits in
2yrs, no activity, uploads or subscribers. Attempted to contact user, but received no response. CompanyName was incorporated in 1994; the US trademark (Registration #XXXXXXX) was filed in 2004 and approved in 2006. Thank you.”
Of course, actually having the trademarks makes a big difference. The whole process took about a month before I heard anything from them, just FYI.
Hello Pixelrage.
This article has been very helpful, thank you.
I just wanted to clarify a few points before moving forward.
If the user account squatting my YouTube name is now closed and the channel no longer available, does this make the case for trademark easier?
I own the website name, Facebook, Linded In and Twitter accounts for my name, is this enough to prove my case without a trademark?
The company you recommended LegalZoom is quite pricey, would you be willing to give a breakdown of the steps to do it on my own?
Thank you.
Hi Bianca, thanks for visiting! If the Youtube channel is freed up, then you certainly do have a better chance at obtaining it…UNLESS…the account has a line of text that says “This account has been terminated due to repeated or severe violations of our Community Guidelines and/or claims of copyright infringement.” If you see this, I can assure you, Youtube will never allow you to own it. I know this, only because I wanted to obtain Youtube.com/pixelrage – go and visit that page, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s unfortunate when some jerk out there ruins things for you like this!
As for getting a trademark – if you don’t want to use a lawyer or a service (like Legalzoom), you’ll have to go to your state’s website and find their “small business” section, and download the State form for trademark applications. I do have to warn you – it is filled with legal-talk which can be a little hard to decipher. If you do go this route, make sure that your trademark drawing is exactly what you want, and that your description of the drawing is laser perfect!