Well, I have a little domainname problem.

My company, Digibytes Internet, owns www.digibytes.org, www.digibytes.net and www.digibytes.nl (The Netherlands, I'm based there), but not digibytes.com.

That domain is taken by a buydomains.com, who wants a couple of thousand of dollars for it!

What do you think, is it hurting my business much that the .com is from a ordinary domainpirate, and should I pay that amount of money for it?

Have you looked at the UDRP and thought about forcing them to give up the domain rather than cybersquat it?

-t

Originally posted by thewitt
Have you looked at the UDRP and thought about forcing them to give up the domain rather than cybersquat it?

-t

They had the domain already before i got my company, so I don't make a change I think.

It all depends.

As it happens,
I've dealt with this exact problem three times to date.
If your company name is a registered trademark, all you have to do is contact the registrar, and most of the time they will give you the domain name for the cost of registration.

If you're looking at $2000 for the domain,
Register your company as a trademark. You should have done it anyway. It only costs $350, which is a lot better than the price above.

It's all covered in the new set of Trademark laws that became active last year.

Once you have your company name trademarked, all you need to do is send notarized proof of your trademark to the registrar with a case that they are hurting your company by holding this domain, infringing on your registered trademark, and that failure to comply will result in legal action. Legal action being the key words. It's not as big a deal as it sounds.

Best Regards,
Sam Moses
Web Specialist

i cant believe that it would be that easy.

to register a trademark and then demand that a domain name owner who had registered a domain name prior to you registering the trademark to simply hand it over defies all sense of fairness.

I was under the impression that a registrar cannot just hand domain names over and that the matter had to be resolved in accordance with the UDRP.

In this case I don' t think it is very unfair, but if it is really that easy all private websites have a problem.

Anyone who wants to own your domain could just trademark that name and you will be forced to give in ...

It's really not that big a deal.
It's not that easy though.
It takes about ten weeks, and miles of paperwork to get through, but in the long run it's worth it.
I don't really think it presents a problem to private web sites.
The new trademark laws were designed to protect companies and organizations against cyber squatters, which they are doing.
For years, internic.com was being cybersquatted. I even seem to remember a porn site a microsoft.com years and years ago before microsoft actually owned it.
Is that fair?

In this case I don' t think it is very unfair

I am sure that if you happened to be the owner of digibytes.com, you would think it unfair that someone could just register a trademark and then demand you to hand it over.

I think in addition to the trademark, you would need to establish that you were trading under that name prior to the registration of the domain name, amongst other things.

Buydomains.com seems to be a domain grabber and just registered this domain to sell it for a high price.

I would be even happy if they loose the domain without getting much or any money. ;)

I'm not making any judgment calls.
The whole point of trade marking your business name is not to snatch up the domain names that may be associated with it. It is to claim your name space, which is becoming increasingly important as the years progress.

By telling me that it's unfair is also telling me that you think it's unfair to be doing business under this name. If you don't care about your business enough to claim your name space, that's your call. If it's that big a deal, you could contact the owner(s) of the domain, and buy it from them making everyone happy.

But there are Registrar TOS agreements and new US and International laws (the most extreme to be found in Europe) governing intellectual property and Business Name Space on the Internet. They aren't there to harm anyone. Quite the opposite. In both instances, they are there to protect your business from slander, and cyber squatters who are stealing (and it is stealing, regardless of when they got there) your name space... your hits. I don't think you are anywhere near as angry as you should be about this.

About five years ago before registrars had TOS agreements addressing this issue, and before there were laws in regard to this type of matter, I had a domain name who's brand was all but permanently disfigured because of a warez outfit with the same name decided to register the .net of the same name. Back then, domain name registration cost $70 a year!

Even if I could have convinced Network Solutions to give me the domain in exchange for back registration fees to the original registrant like I probably could now, I couldn't afford the extra $70 a year after all the other resources I had sunk into this project. So all I could do was watch as my brand was destroyed by these other guys in Russia who were ponning off illegal software.

Obviously, that is a worst-case scenario (and it's happened to a lesser extent since). I'm not saying it is going to happen to you. But what if it did? If you won't take care of this, what is to stop anyone else from buying the domain name, and causing real trouble? Would you feel for the people holding up your domain name then?

Just my two cents. Don't take it too personally.

Do you know for a fact that you can register a trademark and then claim a taken domain.

I thought you had to have at least the application in before the domain was purchased by someone else.

I know when the recent new domain extension's came out you had to have registered your trademark before a particular date to have a claim for the domain.

Another thing
If someone has already got the doman and using it for sometime they may not need to register a trademark for it to be protected.

In this case, I believe that it makes a big difference that www.digibytes.com is simply a link to BuyDomains.com with a pop-up window indicating that the name is for sale. BuyDomains is not actually using the name to sell webhosting, digis, or even bytes. :D

Part of any business name or trademark dispute would be a review of how the name is actually being used in business or trade. Therefore, as Sam says, you should probably get a registered trademark on the name "Digibytes" as soon as possible. But, I'll go one further... you should probably add on to your websites an affiliate link to some computer hardware and software products sold by Amazon.com. Then, you could honestly and legally say that you want the registered trademark for computer software and hardware sales as well as custom computer programming and all internet related services.

After you do this, anyone who purchased the Digibytes.com name to sell anything computer related would be subject to a lawsuit by you claiming trademark infringement. What value would a name like Digibytes.com have to anyone if they can't sell anything computer related? (I guess they could still sell potatoes or sweaters over the internet...)

Then, you put in a domain name dispute in accordance with the UDRP. AND, you have a lawyer send BuyDomains.com a cease and desist letter. Hopefully, you will probably settle out of court, at this point, just buying the name from BuyDomains for maybe $100.00 to $250.00.


Best of luck,


Keith

Several cases come to mind where this premise was established. Most notably, the etoy debacle, which could have ended very badly for the Swiss art company with a name that kind of sort of looked like the name of an online toy seller. Another example of a domain name dispute establishing president can be found here:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,8917,00.html
There is an wonderful web site locate at
http://www.keytlaw.com/urls/geturls.htm
that explains your rights as a trademark holder.

If you are located in the UK,
http://www.weblaw.co.uk/
much of the information on this web site is applicable internationally. Some of it us UK only though. Their laws are right about on par with ours, but it is stricter in some areas.

Sam...

Those are great links that you found... I saved those in my favorites.

Really cool website, too.


Kind Regards,

Keith

Right on.
Know your rights bro.
As a business, you have the ability to squash harmful cyber squatters. Sorry about the UK link, I just visited it, and it looks like they took down the juicy stuff since last I'd been there. Oh well. Such is life.
Have a good one all.