is it legal for someone to buy a domain like mine and then point it to some other place eg my domain mydomain.com theirs mydomain.net or my-domain.com ?????????
Not enough information to even give a good guess. Yes, it's legal from a criminal standpoint. Could you have a civil case for trademark infringement? Depends on a bunch of different factors - most importantly, your trademark rights (if any) and the usage of the other site.
mjewel, as always, has summed it up nicely. Give him more information, and you'll get a more detailed response.
it really does depend on alot of things. digg.com for instance took down diggdown.com , this is because "digg" is a registered trademark and if digg as a company do not protect there own name they can loose the name completly. im no expert , just going off diggs podcast .
The question as stated is very un clear. your title is about copying which is 1000% illegal and the body asks about pointing which is legal. It is legal to buy any domain name (providing it does not infringe on another company name's copyright /trademark) and point it to any other website using a redirect. For example I own a_domain_name.com I can buy another_domain_name.com and have it redirect to a_domain_name.com so that if either are accessed they both end up at the same site. If I am an affiliate for a program with the usual affiliate_program.com/?refid=whatever url I could buy and point some_domain_name.com to it.
This is % untrue. If the domain name is a word which no legal rights can attach and is not trademarked, it is perfectly legal to use a similar domain. For example, it is not possible to trademark a word when used to describe what the word is meant to describe. For example, how can someone trademark the word "bookstore.com" and preclude others from using the word books or bookstore to put up their bookstore that describes what they sell? In such instances, you can "copy" the domain and there is nothing the site owner can do about it - but the site owner may have known this from the beginning and could have chosen a more unique, trademarkable name.
ok here is an example of what im asking. i own alisonsdentalcenter.co.uk someone has bought and redirected alisonsdentalcenters.co.uk and pointed it to some other competitors site we are only a small firm and we have no trade mark like big companies
This apprears to me to be a definate case of trying to profit from your domain name. I am not sure but as you are a company I assume you are registered at company house. If so then I think you should consult with an IP lawyer. There may be some presidence for you by fact that you are a registered business with that name.
Copying any site infringes on that sites copyright that they established when they published the site. You do NOT HAVE to register the copyright. However it does help if you do when claiming damages / costs.
This is wrong. As I stated clearly and others alluded, if there are no rights attached to what is published, there is no copyright violation. You can publish the works of Shakespeare - every one of them - and if someone copies the text there is nothing you can do about it.
This is a trademark issue. I'd send a cease and desist letter to both the registered owner of domain and the competitor, who may be using it for their gain. ICANN is unfortunately more concerned with their fees than they are with this problem, which will cost you a few thousand dollars just to get the domain, without even talking about damages for egregious violations such as this one. If you can, hire an attorney to do this. It will have more "meat" if it comes form one than you and you might want to get this right the first time around.