Ask HN: How to go about domain hogging?

2 points by fizz_and_buzz 13 years ago | 6 comments

I know this topic has been discussed to death, but there is so much contradicting information on the internet.

Here is the situation: My dad owns a business since '95 here in Germany and owns a worldwide trademark of its name. The name is a made up word that is very unlikely that somebody else actually uses (nothing else shows up on google). We do own the ".de" domain. But we have more and more international customers so it would be nice to also own the ".com" domain. Unfortunately the registrant of the".com" domain is one of those shady domain protection services. They are based in the US. They registered the domain in 2000 and it will expire at the beginning of 2013. The DNS doesn't resolve the domain. As far as I can see the domain has never really been used.

I was thinking about writing a little script and trying to snatch it back next months, but I am not sure if that is the best option. How expensive would it be to take legal actions (just a rough idea $100 or $10,000) and how likely is it to be successful?

stfu 13 years ago |

Did you try contacting the owner of the domain? The "shady domain protection service" will usually forward emails to the owner.

Probably contacting them without disclosing your existing affiliations and without coming across as aggressive you might end up with the domain for a few hundred $ instead of spending month/years feeding lawyers across the globe.

Also: Just because the domain is set to expire at a certain date doesn't mean that it is really going to expire. Self written scripts usually loose out to professional drop services ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_drop_catching ).

fizz_and_buzz 13 years ago | |

I would rather not disclose to the owner that I have any interest in the domain. I feel that then they will definitely extend the domain. I assume only somebody who wants to use the domain or sell it to me would use a professional domain drop service. I doubt anybody will have an interest in using this random name. And as long as nobody knows which name I am interested in, I wonder what the chances are that someone would try to snatch it away to sell it to me.

cyphersanctus 13 years ago |

Its called a UDRP, costing around 1 or 2 thousand dollars and takes some time to get. Its also dependant on various factors like whether theyre using the domain in bad faith. If you happen to own the trademark of the exact name that their domain uses, excluding the .com of course, you have a very strong chance of winning the domain. Here's the general info on a UDRP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Res...

And here is a domain name attorney which I highly recommend and who can solve all of your domain related inquiries: http://www.wileyrein.com/professionals.cfm?sp=bio&id=111...

fizz_and_buzz 13 years ago | |

Thanks a lot, this is very useful information. As far as I can see they have never actually used the domain in any way.

hellweaver666 13 years ago |

If you have a trademark on the domain, you can file a complaint with the Domain Resolution Service. They'll look at the trademarks and if they deem you to be the valid owner for the domain, will transfer the domain to you.

fizz_and_buzz 13 years ago | |

Thanks for the answer. Just to clarify, we do not have a trademark on the domain, but only on the company name i.e. on "our_company_name" and not "our_company_name.com". I assume we need a lawyer to file a proper complaint. Do you have any experience in how much the whole process costs?