A friend of mine has a small business and she wishes to register the domain that corresponds to the name. However the domain is taken, but does not appear to be in use. I have done a whois on the domain which yielded less than helpful information. The registar of the domain was a company that was a random mismash of letters and the contact information does not appear to be valid. The domain has been registered since 2003 and updates every year the day before expiration. The only conclusion that I can draw is that someone is holding the domain for resale. I however have no idea who to get the domain? The contact info seems to be invalid and I don't know how to get a hold of the reseller. I was hoping someone here could give me advice on how to acquire the domain. Thank You.
Your first step is to notify ICANN (assuming it's a dot com) that the domain registration information is incorrect : http://reports.internic.net/cgi/registrars/problem-report.cgi You then need to watch the registration information to see if it is updated or "dropped". This will all take time and your friend may be better to expand on the domain name. You can do it quite cleverly - saw a company yesterday and their domain was "scaffold company", an airline has grabaseat or you might want to tack on the state initials so that its mysiteCA.com
Don't assume the domain is not spoken for as I have at least 50+ domains held for clients some since 1998 that have yet to be developed. Like sarahk said, see what develops with the whois information if anything and take it from there. What makes me think it's valid is that they continue to renew every year so there must be an idea behind the registration beyond resale.
Depending on the keywords in the domain they could well be happy just to have it idle to protect another domain name they hold. If they are running a real world business the cost of registration isn't significant compared to rents, interest and staff payments.