Only you can decide what the .com is worth to you.. If 5 figures is too much come back with a real offer.. The worst that can happen is that he will ignore it.. The best is that he will sell it to you.. My "guess" is that he is making money off of your name from people typing in the name.com and landing on his parking page.. Then clicking a link to leave.. It is possible that you can be losing business from this.. But, the fact that you got involved in the internet late in the game is no one's fault but your own.. And either way this is going to cost you money for not being more proactive.. Money in buying the name, money in trying to take it legally, money in lost revenue from people going to .com rather than .net.. Make him an offer.. Or hire a lawyer..
exactly what i was going to say. sure he made an outrageous offer. make a counter offer, but make a real offer. what is the domain worth to you? $900? $8500? Sit down and think about it, how much is a .Com in your industry worth? Probably not much since you have not had one for 20 years and I assume you are not the CEO of a large Electronics Corp. so, decide what it's worth and make that offer, you will prob get a sale. if possible, get the owners contact info. and call him. email is a bad medium to negotiate. if you cant find a real phone #, send an email with your real contact info and ask for a call, tell him you are ready to deal. if not get a lawyer and you will eventually likely get the name, but it will cost a few K...
We've been in business with the name since 1982. But we only recently trademarked our company name. It was not trademarked at the time they registered. The domain name is most definitely similar to our trademark. The registrant has advertising on the page for services within the same industry as my company. Generic advertising that you see on most parked pages, but advertising all the same. I've discussed it with my partner, and we sent a polite letter to them asking for the domain. If they don't reply amicably within a month, we'll just go the ICANN route and see what happens. I think our position is strong and we'll prevail, it'll just take time.
Update? What I'm wondering is why you didn't at least offer something for the name to begin with and have some kind of negotiation before threatening them with a WIPO.
I've had plenty of experience in these matters - what I personally would do to avoid any potential unnecessary stress & legal problems & expenses is explain your situation to the .com registrant & if you would have to spend thousands to sue him anyway, offer his a fair price for the name. Why would you sue him & spend thousands to potentially not get the name anyway - you may as well pay it to the .com registrant instead!!!!! Makes sense. It doesn't sound like he's at fault in any way. If you are the one who contacted him in the first place about the name & he didn't try to extort money from you for the name (how would he possibly know about your business or future trademark plans??!!!) He's not at fault, unless he NOW uses the name after finding out that you have the trademark. Sounds like he's a little too smart for that! Parking page ads are based on keywords - so it's not even a fact that by his parking page posting "relevent" (to keywords in the name) ads - that its actually HIM that is INTENTIONALLY choosing specifically-infringing ads to INTENTIONALLY compete with you exclusively. In this case, you would actually be reverse domain name hijacking if you go after his jugular by suing & not offering him anything. That's bullying. It doesn't make him a "squatter" just because you decided to use HIS .com name for your business. It is indeed a rarity for almost any company in the world to have exclusive rights to use the exact name of your company. A lot depends on UCC code/usage, etc. In other words, there may be a possibility for someone else in the world to use/trademark the same name for their company as yours (& I don't know what the name is, so I couldn't know for sure) - unless you were an Internationally-known company (like Johnson & Johnson, Trump, Procter & Gamble, etc) AND if the other name used is used in a similar or same UCC category, etc. It really gets very complicated. I wouldn't go there - I've owned 10 companies over the past 23 years. Choose your battles wisely is the advice I'd give you. Of course your attorneys would say to sue if you ask them. It keeps them in business! LOL For future reference - you should ALWAYS check the .com of your trademarked name BEFORE you trademark it!!!!!!!! And you should never, ever register the .net of the same name before you ask the registrant of the .com if they'll sell you it!!!!!!! So, this was really your mistake. I personally made a very large amount of money for a name because a multi-billion $ International Corp. made the same mistake. And I am certainly NOT any squatter. I was very innocent. They "showed their hand" & messed up. Not my mistake. And they knew there was no chance to sue me, so they ended up paying a lot of $ (to me) because their company fouled up. Be careful. If it were me in your position, I'd make the guy a fair counter offer & cut your losses & get the name once & for all. You'll have it forever & the sooner the better, because it will most likely help your profits to have that com. Hope this helped.