What would you do if you managed to snag an expiring domain that is 8 years old that a government agency accidentally forgot to renew? And they obviously use the domain alot and just must have simply got forgotten to renew by accident in administration? Would you let them know and give it back to them for your cost? Would you ask for a huge profit to give them back the domain? Would you put your own site idea on the domain instead? What would you do?
mine was a general question about any domain, say for example that the domain is a big site run by the state of New York listing all of their programs in helping people find employment and job training, lots of pages on the resources available and schedules and stuff. Not a .gov but a .org domain. The name is initials so it is not a trademark problem. When they find out it is expired it will be a big hassle for them to have to change everything and they have the domain address on their printed catalogs and brochures too. What would you do?
Depends on the agency , if its something like the revenue department, then I would feel no pain at holding the domain for ransom. If it's a security agency, I'd probably go into hiding, while still holding it ransom <- Just kidding. If you got it fair and square, then they should come to you with an offer if they really want it back.
My guess is they would just go to court and force you to give it back. But in the meantime, I would park it and reap the profit if there is any.
Well, because I'm mean, I'll tell you what I did. I found an expiring domain name, which was owned by the US Government, for the last general election, as an 'election news' site, which has a few quality links, PR5, 6's and 7's. Currently the domain is PR6. I don't know what to do with it, it's not a .gov, but .com, I checked the previous whois and it was indeed registered to the US Senate. Hmm, I'm not willing to go to guantanamo for it, though! PM me if you're interested in the site. Another expired domain that pissed me off was traveline.org - the UK based travel site to help you plan your journey via public transport. It expired, somebody snapped it up, using Pool.com. The domain is printed on near enough every travel timetable, flyer, everything. Think how much that guy is making! Funnily enough, they bought traveline.org.uk or something pathetic like that and never bothered to fight for it. Hmm, strange.
Has it expired yet? When it expires it will go into redemption & will no longer resolve to the website. If it's a busy domain they will notice it's down and renew before it drops 2 months later.
Exactly, i don't think they need this domain, and hence let it drop, otherwise they'd have renewed it well before the drop. You could do whatever you want to do with the name, i don't think they'd purchase this name back from you.
it has been snapped in the stage of expiring and the nameservers still resolve to their website, so they wouldn't even notice anything at all yet, their right to reclaim is over tomorrow
You'd be a complete fool to give it back to them for your cost as you mentioned it's not a TM, only initials. I'd park the domain, collect the revenue & hope they contact me to buy it off me for a huge amount of money
Then you don't think initials like AMD, AOL and IBM cannot be trademarks? Hmm? And given the current US administration, trying to sell it to them could be quite a risky venture. But hey, it's your arse.
If you setup something completely unrelated to them on say, IBM.com, I don't think there would be any TM problems...
I think he means that if you happen to buy ibm.com out of expiration and set up a site on it that you call Indianapolis Bolt Manufacturing (for example) that you would be ok.
Not if IBM had 'IBM' trademarked. Much like 'google' in domain names, although 'Google' is a registered trademark you can still purchase a domain with the term in it. But if you wanna keep the domain, you best not buy hosting for the site, but a damn good attorney.
What does this mean? Has the domain expired? On what date? Has it entered the grace or redemption periods? Has it entered the pending delete period? When it enters the redemption period it will no longer resolve and they will notice it is down - and will still be able to renew it before drop-catchers can grab it. edit: is it a dot com?