Last week I received a telephone call from someone who requested that I better give a domain, which I own, to them, since he has a company with the same name. Obviously I told him that I was going to think about it.

I found out that his company is registered in the same city I am in, only it was registered 2 months AFTER I registered the domain name. Somehow this smells fishy, since its not such a well known name in google, only 30 links contain that word.. so its a bit strange that suddenly someone comes up with the exact same name, and lives in my city. So I assume one or more of my partners have "talked" around spilling my name.

Anyway.. I was wondering what my dutch (or international) legal position would be. Since I registered the domain 2 months before he registered his company at the dutch chamber of commerce.

Its a domain I do intend to develop, not sell (unless he would pay serious cash, since its a name I cant find easily anymore). The company who wants the domain wants to do the exact same thing with it.

Any opinions on this anyone? :-)

Tell them you're not going dutch on this one - they pay! :D

So basically what you say is they dont stand a chance against me (legally)? :)

Not sure what the Dutch law says; if you're from Holland you should be able to find out. Technically speaking, if I register domain.com and a company registers a trademark after I do, then I had prior use and things look better for me. But if you want real answers talk to a lawyer.

Well they did not actually register a trademark. They only registered their company name. I was also thinking along the same lines. I'm pretty confident that he can't claim it from me. I also looked around on the net to find previous legal cases about this, but havent come up with anything yet (in dutch that is, lol).

Is it a .nl domain or anything else?

There were some big companies here in Holland claiming domains (and won), one example is the KPN (Dutch phone company) who claimed detelefoongids.nl (thephoneguide.nl in english :D )

But all the examples (that I know of) are for .nl tld's

I suggest you ask your registrar how they would handle domain disputes for in case it will come to that

In the meantime, I will check the Dutch registrar and see if they have more info about this

Hope this will help a bit

Yea its a .nl domain. Its much different than the KPN case you brought forth. I registered the domain 2 months before they registered the company. I'll reply to them once i'm more than confident I will win the case :banana:

Hey, I am Dutch and if this is the whole story to it then trust me, you can keep the domain, pretty obvious.

Unfortunately this is not the whole story. He didn't mention the part about the mysterious blonde, the shipment of the Cuban cigars and the body that was found floating in the canal :D

Not a legal expert, but I am Dutch. I'd say they have very little ground to just demand the domain. Tell them to come up with a reasonable offer or stop waisting your time. Once they have laywers writing you letters, instead of them just phoning you and saying 'we want it for free', then I'd start taking it more seriously.

They certainly can't argue you registered the domain to make a profit off it selling it to them, as the name wasn't even around at the time you registered it.

Hmmm who told you about the cuban cigars? ;-)

But anyway.. i'm awaiting a response from a lawyers office (I love those 30 free minutes of advice), and once I get that i'm confident they can buzz off and start using their .net domain version instead of herassing me for my .nl :-) I think i'll also scare em a bit with my legal writing skills.

I wanted to be as much prepared as possible.. its like a game of chess... know what your opponent can do and base your actions on that so that he cant surprise you anymore.