How hard is it to acquire an undeveloped parked domain name that has not been developed if it is the same name as your companies trademarked name?
It can be as easy as finding the owner of the domain name and offering to buy it, waiting for it to come on the market if the registration expires, or it can be as difficult as years of litigation in which you risk tarnishing your corporate image ...........and anywhere in between. Refer to Nissan.com - a small computer company is being attacked by a big Japanese company. Nissan Computer Corp has been in business a long time. The owners name is Nissan. He bought Nissan.com, and has had the web site many years. He has a valid claim to it. IMO, the big Japanese company should have no claim to it, and they are abusing the legal system in order to try and get the small company to give up. With all the available tld's, such as .biz, .us, and in the Nissan case, .jp, and with flexibility to use hyphens, can you not find a domain name that matches your business name satisfactorily? If the ideal name is what you really want, good luck in attempting to acquire it. A few hundred bucks might do the trick?
Oh I wouldn't be quick to judge they shouldn't have a claim: http://www.citizen.org/documents/CourtofAppealsRulingNissanMotorvNissanComputer.pdf Can't really say whether it's easy or hard to acquire a seemingly undeveloped domain name. It's case to case, depending on who you're dealing with. Is the domain name displaying any site at all at this time? Have you researched the registrant to give you an idea who they are, what they do, etc.? Of course, one can be an unreasonable jerk yet still have the law on your side. Potentially, anyway.
I agree. It was a back and forth court case. Nissan Motors tried to make a legal claim, and for a while it appeared they might win. I'm pleased with the latest rulings in favor of Nissan Computers. The bottom-line though is that trying to buy it could be much easier than trying to force an acquisition (since this is posted under legal issues, it is probably being considered). I agree that it would be good to find out as much info as possible about what kind of business they are in. You might want to check the Wayback Machine to find out if the domain name was ever used. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php Another thing you can do is go to whatever domain registrar you use and attempt a domain name backorder if it becomes available. I would check to see when it is expiring, and if it is soon, it might be worth the extra money.
If the domain was purchased before your name was in use, you have no claim to begin with--unless that domain is infringing on your trademark. Just owning the domain is infringement if it was owned before your company name was registered / in use. I did a backorder once and got the name. It was a a few more bucks, but worth it.
That's good. I regret not placing a backorder for an ideal name to match up exactly with one of my existing businesses. It got scooped up by a domain name collector. I immediately wrote them, offered to buy it for $20, and told them not to use it since it was an existing business name, and told them that if they sell it to someone else, they should advise them that I am doing business under that name. I'm glad it worked out for you. Next time, I will know better.
Nissan should have offered some money to buy it off his hand. Mr. Nissan is a tough guy, from his appearance.
I don't have any links to prove this. But from what I gathered, the Japanese car company did try to buy the domain name from Mr. Nissan. Supposedly he was offered 6 figures. Why he refused, only he can say. Unfortunately how the domain name was used at some point in time gave the car company a book to throw at him. And the rest is history.
Some people value their business image as well as their family and cultural identity more than money I'm not one of them though, heh.
Not really. They didn't offer him anything. What he said was that the lawyer that the car maker hired called him for price. He was so pissed that he screamed out, "$10 million, I don't wanna sell it, you got it?" I read through the site long time ago.
There are over 40 different trademark classifications and unless you have a highly uncommon name, it's unlikely you would have legal rights to the name unless it was used in a manner that infringed upon your classification. There are at least 3 different owners of "myspace" (Federal Registration) and each has it's own rights to the use the name.