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May 12, 2008

CitizenHawk Raises $3 Million To Target Cybersquatters

Jason Kincaid

18 comments »

CitizenHawk, a digital brand management company, has raised $3 million in funding from Maveron LLC.

CitizenHawk helps companies protect their online brands by targeting cybersquatters. According to CitizenHawk, up to 20% of hand-typed URLs are misspelled, which has created a market for “typo” domains. Many of these “typosquatting” sites employ the use of profane ads and spyware to maximize their profits, which can tarnish a brand’s image. CitizenHawk locates these sites, notifies them of their trademark infringements, and initiates legal action if the offenders refuse to cooperate.

CitizenHawk intends to use the money to increase their staff and encourage growth in the market. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Aliso Viejo, California.

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CitizenHawk
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This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 9:01 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. KillerStartups.com - CitizenHawk.com - Fighting Typosquatters

    May 12th, 2008 at 11:16 am

  2.   Anti-Typosquatter firm raises $3M by BrandVerity

    May 12th, 2008 at 11:25 am

  3. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » サイバースクワッターと戦うCitizenHawkが$3M調達

    May 12th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

  4. USD 3MM para combatir a los cyberocupas

    May 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

  5. Maveron Plays Both Sides, Backs Citizen Hawk with $3 Million | Domain Name News

    May 12th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

Comments

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  1. VentureDeal

    May 12th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    Boy, this sure is a niche market. I’m amazed they got $3 million in venture capital.

  2. Shafqat

    May 12th, 2008 at 9:39 am

    Agreed, that is a lot of money. Are these guys a tech company or a legal company? It seems like the technology is easily copied, so must be their ability/track record on the legal site that makes this interesting. But…still a lot money.

  3. Jim Jackson

    May 12th, 2008 at 9:43 am

    Sure its niche but its part of a lot larger industry: domain parking- i believe they’ll be targeting the large domain portfolio owners and parking services, whom park and profit from these trademarked infringing names by placing Google/yahoo links on their parked pages- domain parking on a whole is estimated at north of a $1 billion/yr industry and with the recent capitalization of Oversee.net($180 MM noted here) and IPO flirtations of Name.com signalizing legitimization, how much of their traffic is coming from these TM domains?

  4. Morgan

    May 12th, 2008 at 9:58 am

    These guys just sound like a barrel of laughs. It’s a smart idea though.

  5. Peter Urban

    May 12th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Sounds to me like they are more service oriented then product oriented. In that case they should be able to scale their staff based on incoming work and cash flow instead of investment capital. Sound a lot like the web design boutiques (Agency.com or Pixelpark anyone ?) that got huge funding to scale their workforce to prepare for even better business to come, just to implode as soon as the bubble inflated.

    Peter
    Do you follow me on http://twitter.com/peterurban

  6. Trivia Mania Games

    May 12th, 2008 at 10:20 am

    This is ass backwards and won’t help brands in any way, shape or form. There are other, real ways of protecting a brand online. How are they going to pursue people in places like Vietnam, Poland, Russia, etc? ICANN is the only way and companies proceed that way, on their own, already.

  7. Ron Sheridan

    May 12th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Jimi,

    re: Oversee.net($180 MM noted here)

    A: It was $150m - fyi

    re: and IPO flirtations of Name.com

    A: NameMedia.com has filed not Name.com

  8. Ghaus

    May 12th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Did u guys remember how Google solved this problem…. they registered 1000s of similar domains…. lol… very clever !

  9. Tim G

    May 12th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    Cybersquatters are scumbags…Booyah!!

  10. JRo

    May 12th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    Sounds a little like what http://www.brandverity.com is working on

  11. Q dub

    May 12th, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    Noble cause, but the problem is in policy.

  12. Andrew Allemann

    May 13th, 2008 at 6:53 am

    Your profile is inaccurate, they already raised money from Maveron in the past…

    http://domainnamewire.com/2007.....squatting/

  13. Kerry

    May 25th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Nice site! magolpy mp3 music

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