I'm currently employed by a fairly large company in the Netherlands to develop their website. This company wishes to expand into the European Union (France, Spain, Belgium, etc.) and register the corresponding domainnames. For the most domains, this is no problem, but several domains are already registered by a student, a portal (with two links), and a site aimed at small children.

What options are there to achieve these domains? If we took it to court, how strong would we be?

Not an attorney but let me share my feedback.

If you want to "achieve" those domain names "legitimately", your
best option is to negotiate with the owners. Either buy those from
their respective owners at an agreed price, or give something else
they may be looking for.

After that, this is where I will disagree with your view on this.

What makes you sincerely believe you and the company you are
representing have greater rights than the current owners? In the
words of a famous attorney involved in domain legal matters:

"You can't just wander through life deciding that other people
have things that you want, and then wave a magic legal wand to
take those things away from them."

But if you really want to give it a go, ask your attorney. Whoever
your attorney is will probably refer to UDRP or Court.

Your attorney had better be damn good in proving your company
has indeed "greater rights" than the current owners. Otherwise,
be prepared for the possibility of losing big time, getting negative
publicity, and being hounded by domainers here and around.

Bottom line, offer to buy the names. Otherwise, give it up and just
move on.

But if your company is hell-bent on getting those names by hook
or by crook, it's your and their move.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm sorry if you had the idea I thought we had greater rights. It seemed common to me that a company has first rights to a domain with his (copyrighted) name then a private citizen.

It's not that the company is hell-bent on obtaining these domains, I'm sent to investigate the options. And the negative publicity is certainly not something we think light of over here.

I will report back to my superiors that legal action should be a very last resort, with all the negative consequences, and offering to buy the domain is the first.

From what I understand is that you want to register several ccltlds for the company. If the domain is a registered trademark and the use of the other domains is infringing your trademark you could have a chance getting the domains back via a dispute. But this all depends on the rules of the specific country of course. The easiest way is probably contacting the owner and trying to buy them. Btw are you Dutch?

Yes I'm Dutch ;)

if the domain is in the hands of someone in the benelux you can get them by court if they don't agree if it is your trademark, in other european countries you will have to check the law in that country. if you want more info about this from me this is possible (in dutch or in english, i don't care). for more info just send me a pm. i will answer all your questions as soon as possible.

Originally posted by Dutchy
Thanks for the reply.

I'm sorry if you had the idea I thought we had greater rights. It seemed common to me that a company has first rights to a domain with his (copyrighted) name then a private citizen.

Oh no problem. And I apologize if I came off negatively to you on
this as well.

Originally posted by Dutchy
It seemed common to me that a company has first rights to a domain with his (copyrighted) name then a private citizen.

Just some FYIs: no one has "first rights" to any domain name. It's
first come, first served so to speak, so the first to register it is the
one who gets rights to use it as s/he sees fit.

Also, when dealing with domain names, it's trademark/s that's to
be concerned about. Copyrights don't apply to domain names. :)

But all the same, good luck!

you mean now the student has control over your domains and doesn't want to give them back to you?