legal issues with a domain name

Hi everybody,

I work for an Israeli travel agency that's quite internet oriented.
During the last couple of days we have run into some issues with google (i opened a thread about it here).

basically, we think we won't be able to use our primary domain name, www.yeshtours.co.il.
Hence, we thought why not use one of our old domains, which we haven't touched for over a year (i think i wasn't even an employee of the company back then).
we were thinking of using www.yeshtours.com , but as i checked it, i found out that it was taken and used some sort of privacy protection service.
Right now the site is only running ads on it while trying to sell the domain (here).
Our company is registered with all the relevant governmental authorities in Israel as well as various professional organisms worldwide.
I don't have a problem paying the guy the registration fees since he bought it.
Do i have any possibility of acquiring it back again without paying too much?
is there anything on the legal point of view that i can do, despite the fact we are not a registered trademark?

thank you all very much for your tips

 

You will have to pay the asking price.

 

I agree with fathom, you'll just have to pay the price set. Domain squatting is a big business. Type in "George Bush Library Domain Name" into Google and the first article will give you a laugh, but at the same time similar to the problem you face. The website expired and a quick domain squatter bought it and sold it back to them for 35k. You probably won't have to pay such a high price, and probably can negotiate because I doubt he/she will have received any other offers than yours.

 

aren't there any laws regarding such issues?

 

It would appear you let the domain registration lapse and someone picked up the domain. Even if you had a trademark claim, it is going to be far cheaper to buy the domain from them then use them.

I would make an offer to them, and certainly not let them know you own the other domain. The domain probably doesn't have much value to anyone else but yourself, so you certainly don't want them to know that and use it to get more money from you.

One other thing you should consider is that since the domain dropped it has a new creation date and since google places weight on the age of the domain, this is likely going to affect rankings. You also have built a lot of backlinks for the old domain and have a dmoz listing - and that is going to go away unless you do a 301 redirect, which is going to alert google and not solve any issues you have with them.

 

someone did their homework!
thanks for the useful tips!

i tried offering the guy 35$, but he refused it

 

You could spend $5K on having an attorney file a UDRP - and being a parked domain, I wouldn't bet that you would win (if you have a registered trademark, it would increase your chances). If someone buys that domain and develops it in a way that competes with you business, then you would probably have a good chance of taking the domain.

A trademark lawsuit would cost you far more than $5K - you would probably spend twice that before a suit was even filed. Full blown lawsuits get into six figures (although I'm almost sure they wouldn't fight you). I would consider offering somewhere between $100 and $500 if you really want that domain.

 

glad he just refused politely