Large company wants my domain name

Hi, I'm a noob to this forum. Here is my story. I bought a home from one of the top 10 home builders in the US. The home sucks. I registered ******sucks.com (the ****** is the name of the builder). I put up a simple website just telling people to re-think buying a home from this builder and if they already bought a home from them to email me their horror story. My site also had the builder's logo + $475k = a picture of an oversized piece of crap (with windows, a door and a chimney) sitting in a toilet. I received a letter from the lawyer representing the builder saying that I have infringed on the builders copyright. I took down their logo as they "requested" in their letter (but have kept the site up). I had perviously put a disclaimer on the bottom of the page that the logo was the registered trademark of the company. Anyway, the bottom of their letter states that they would be "willing to pay a reasonable fee to cover your expenses" if I transfer the domain name to them. The builder had registered ******sucks.net and .info 2 months after I registered .com.

I have already replied to them that I would entertain any offers (and that I have complied with their requests).

Any advice from anyone. What would be a reasonable offer from a company that had a net profit of $481 million in 2005? Thanks

 

How much did you pay for your house again

That amount would be fair .. Wouldent it?..

That being said.. Go for gold man.. if they themselves has expressed interest in buying it, then you should be pretty much in the clear.

I think that it would atleast be worth mid xxxx$ for them to buy you to remove the site.. What a great idea btw.. I have loads of companies I could do that with

Congratz!

 

Think of the money that you lost on the house and that's what you may want to get

 

u lucky guy...id take anything over 1K

 

I've read and re-read their letter several times. No where does it say they are immediately sueing me. Their site is Khov[dot]com My site is khovsucks[dot]com. But, I immediately replaced their logo with the simple word Khov after I was contacted. I had used the site out of my own personal frustrations and never set out to profit from the home builder and never contacted them saying "i own this site buy it from me". Still think I'm ok?

 

You generally cannot use any form of a trademark in a domain - however, courts have ruled that "xxxxsucks.com" is not trademark infringement because the average person would not assume such a site is operated by the trademark holder. Use of their logo would be another story.

This wouldn't prevent the trademark holder from suing you for libel. Make sure you are careful to avoid making statements of fact that you cannot prove. "Opinions" are generally protected - i.e. there is a difference from stating something as a fact i.e. "XXXX is the worst builder of homes in the world" vs. saying "In my opinion, xxxx is the worst builder of homes I have ever seen."

By clearly stating that something is your opinion, you can prevent a lot of potential problems and legal costs - as even if a court subsquently finds any statements you made were opinions (even though not stated as such), you do not get to recover your legal fees or collect damages.

Refrain from making comments that have malicious intention, which can be "Libel Per Se".

 

You + MS Paint = rockin!

 

If you want to make a realistic offer, look up how much cash they are generating through operation (assuming that it's a publicly traded company).
Should they at least give you 30 min worth of their cash flow? One hour?
If their net income was $481MM, I'm guessing that they generate at least $50,000 in cash/hour on average.
If you don't know how to get the numbers, just ask me.

 

Thanks for all of your comments. It will be interesting to hear back from them. How about this for a number $263,790.00. LOL. How did I get that number? The company's net profit in 2005 was (actually) $469.1 million. They sold 17,783 homes..so their net profit per home is $26,379. If my opinions were to discourage just 10 people (less than 0.0006 % of their 2005 home buyers) from buying a home ...........?

 

Hmmmmm...... What would prevent every web savvy person on the net from holding companys hostage? This seems very disturbing that they have no recourse. that said...... That is funny as hell and Kicks butt!

 

How did they find you? I couldn't find your site in any SE's when searching for "khov" or even "khov sucks"

 

They "found me" by sending an email to khovsucks@aol. They also sent a letter to the service I used to keep my registration info private, but I haven't received a forward from the proxy service.

 

Oh, I see. It's Hovanian huh?
They won't be able to give you $263,790 since they only have $56,945 in cash.
Given the profit figure, I assumed that this was a cash flow positive company (on operating basis) but it's not.
High $xxxx max IMHO.

 

I'm thinking of buying ....sucks.com because I'm not getting a fair deal from a website dealing with expired domains. I paid a lot for their services but I had been getting inaccurate info.

I had asked for a refund but they are to busy to reply.

Premium.com was listed as pending deletion despite the fact that the domain is doing fine. Only a serious degree of insanity would let go Premium.com.

 

Just a suggestion but if it were me, I would put up some pictures of why I thought they built a sucky house -- close ups and all.

 

$500. My thought is to not accept it. How does this sound. I will write them back and tell them of all of the problems I've had with the house, that if they "compensate" me for what it will cost me to have a contractor fix the problems...thus making me a happy Khovnanian home owner, I will give them the domain name for nothing.

 

Be careful about sending them an email that sounds like extortion - which can get you a criminal charge.