How to acquire domain name similar to our company's domain

May 22, 2009 4:47 PM

Want to acquire a domain name that is the plural of our company's name.

The company I work for has a domain that is companyname.com. Unfortunately, a lot of people think the name is plural and try to go to companynameS.com and someone else owns it.

There is nothing at the domain, but it has been registered since 1999 and seems to get renewed every year.

Obviously, the owner of the domain we want isn't using it. Do we have any rights to it? If not, what is the best way to buy the domain without way overpaying (we're a very small business).

posted by sfdrew77 to computers & internet (10 comments total)

If you don't have rights to it, you can buy it from the person who owns it.

For the record, you don't know they're not using it just because there's no Web page there. It could be used for email, or for ftp, or maybe there's a page at some filepath in from the top level domain.

Use the whois database to find out who they are.
http://www.internic.net/whois.html is one place to access it. Enter the domain name.

Some registrars offer private registration, as a spam guard/cash cow, in which case you'll see a c/o address; they'll usually forward on mail from that mailing address to the domain owner.
In any case, they have the same rights to it that they have to any other piece of property: they can sell it to you for money. If they want to.

Talk to an intellectual property lawyer to find out if you have a case. Trademark is complicated, and it's not simplified on the Web.

Good luck.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:20 PM on May 22

Ahem, http://www.internic.net/whois.html. Stupid wine.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:21 PM on May 22

You may also want to consider not identifying yourself as companyname.com when making an offer, at least initially. If the current owner realizes he's selling to companyname.com, he is likely to ask for a much higher price than if he's selling to some random domain purchaser who just wants the name to place ads and such. I'm told there are intermediaries that take care of such things for you or you can just use someone not directly connected with the company. YMMV of course.
posted by zachlipton at 5:32 PM on May 22

chesty_a_arthur is correct. Your only way to acquire this would be to contact the owner and try to purchase it from them. If they agree, make sure to use escrow to handle the transfer of funds.

As a little more background: If there's no website hosted there, you can't (successfully) claim trademark infringement. In order to invoke Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) three things must be the case: (modified slightly from here)

1. The domain name(s) is/are identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the Complainant has rights; and

2. The Respondent (domain-name holder) should be considered as having no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name(s) that is/are the subject of the complaint; and

3. Why the domain name(s) should be considered as having been registered and being used in bad faith.

In this case, if there's no site, no matter how strong a case you can mount for points one and two, you'll have a very, very difficult (approaching impossible) time proving "bad faith." Bad faith is typically defined as deliberately tricking visitors into thinking that you are the company in question, or deliberately directing visitors to competitors sites. While I suppose a case could be mounted if, say, they were engaging in either of these practices through email, or set up bogus FTP servers and tried to trick your clients into uploading files there, for the most part no site = no decision in your favor.
posted by SpiffyRob at 5:36 PM on May 22

[IIAIPL, but IINYIPL, this is general information, not legal advice:]

If the registration cannot be purchased for a reasonable price, and if one's company's name is a trademark (esp. a registered trademark) then the company may be able to recover the registration, provided that the current registrant has registered the name in bad faith (e.g., to siphon traffic from the company's customers who mistakenly enter the plural form of the company's name). Assuming that this is a bad faith registration (and that the company is in the U.S.), The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy provides a mechanism for trademark holders to recover unauthorized bad faith registrations directly from the registrar. The company may also have other options, including less formal and less expensive options, but a lot is going to depend on: A. How unique is the company’s trademark (Does the term have a generic meaning?), and, B. where the current bad faith registrant is located.
posted by applemeat at 5:45 PM on May 22

IAAIPL rather.. grr.
posted by applemeat at 5:47 PM on May 22

How long has your company been in business? Is the company name a generic term? These things matter in terms of "bad faith".
posted by FlamingBore at 9:39 PM on May 22

"Obviously, the owner of the domain we want isn't using it."

FWIW, you can't know that. I have a domain I've kept registered for the last 9 years, and it looks like there's no site there. But I have some random projects and photo galleries in subdirectories and subdomains, and I use it for email and ftp.

There's more to the internet than just the WWW.
posted by CrayDrygu at 11:07 PM on May 22

If the owner doesn't want to sell, you can ask them for a landing page that lets the visitor choose your correction domain as an option. If that fails too, then I would go through the ICANN dispute machine. ICANN tends to favor trademark holders so that works in your favor. But CrayDrygu is right: just because there's no web page there doesn't mean the owner isn't using it.
posted by chairface at 11:46 PM on May 22

ICANN tends to favor trademark holders so that works in your favor.

I've got to disagree with this. There's no "tendency" in ICANN's decisions whatsoever. Do your homework, because the onus is on you to prove the bad faith aspect. If what you're telling us is all you present in your complaint, you'll walk away with nothing but a $1800-$2400 hole in your pocket. (The cost of filing.)
posted by SpiffyRob at 5:10 AM on May 23