Astro-Med Wins Landmark Case Against Cybersquatter.

Business Editors

WEST WARWICK, R.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2000

Astro-Med, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALOT) announced today that WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) awarded an improperly registered internet domain to "its rightful owner", Astro-Med.

The ruling deals a swift blow to "Cybersquatters", who register domain names for which they have no legitimate interest, and then attempt to extract payments from companies by "selling them back", often for exorbitant prices.

Astro-Med is one of the first companies worldwide to succeed in acquiring a domain name from a Cybersquatter, pursuant to new internationally recognized intellectual property regulations. The ruling may well end the practice of Cybersquatters, who register internet URLs containing registered trade names for the sole purpose of selling the domain names to the owners of the trademarks. This practice has been an ongoing problem for legitimate companies, who have been forced to "buy" their own trade names from profiteers who have already registered the domain names.

In this case, a Cybersquatter registered "grasstelefactor.com" upon learning that Astro-Med had acquired Telefactor Corp. and intended to combine it with Astro-Med's Grass Products Group to form a new product group to be called GrassTelefactor. The Cybersquatter then attempted to extract a payment from Astro-Med for title to the domain name.

Astro-Med filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, which ruled that the Cybersquatter had no legitimate interest in the domain name "grasstelefactor.com", and ordered the domain name be transferred immediately to Astro-Med.

The Grass-Telefactor Product Group of Astro-Med designs, manufactures, and sells advanced systems for EEG and PSG (sleep monitoring), Long Term Epilepsy monitoring, and OR/ICU neuromonitoring, as well as supplies, accessories, and a broad range of products for neurophysiological research.