How do common law rights apply to domain names? Lets say you have a domain name registered, and 2 months later someone else decides to buy a domain name very similar to yours but adds an "s" to the ending of the domain name or vise versa. for example example.com 2 months later someone purchases examples.com and wants a high price for it or vise versa
Should have bought it when it was cheap.. Unless you have the trademark and the lawyers to do something about it, forget it and move on..
Both aren't trademarked, I bought the domain first, and a couple months someone decides to take away the "s" at the end and buys that name and wants to sell it.
It's not quite as simple as that, James, and it also varies a little from country to country. If you can show that it was registered specifically in order to try to re-sell it to you (which might be surprisingly easy to do, if an approach has been made), it's actually possible, in some jurisdictions, to get a court order compelling its resale to you at the purchase price.
No, he didn't even offer it to me, I just saw it for sale yesterday on some website when I typed my domain name into google, that came up, and it was registered 1 month ago. Mine was registered longer than that. Its funny because he was asking over $500 dollars for it a 2 days ago and yesterday he is now down to $150.
Thanks for the clarification alexa, i see what you mean, if the domain was registered and is being used for misuse yes he could contact wipo ect and see if he can get the domain without an s sent to him e.g as you say it was registered for the sole purpose of resale to the owner of the one with the s. Althought if it is registered and is being used for propper purposes or you have no proof of misuse and you have no trademark it is harder to get it. if you have no proof of misuse you either need to forget about the one without the s or offer to buy it off him, chances are if he is getting desperate to sell he will accept a $50 or lower Offer.
He's not reselling it to me, He had listed it on a domain site or some other site for sale. I just clicked into it by chance.
Well in this case, he has the full rights to do this, a lot of people do this with common typo's with domain names, and just park them or sell them again. It sucks, but there is nothing you can do
Yes, I see. In that case, you can't really show misuse, and it seems very unlikely indeed that you can do anything about it. Your own domain-name is secure, though.
Domain registration gives you zero trademark rights. You must have usage to establish rights. If this other person uses his domain for a usage like music before you, then he has rights and you wouldn't be able to use the domain for anything music related. It doesn't matter that you registered the domain first. This assume it is a name that can be trademarked.