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Domain Names Forum

    
Any recourse against .com version of my site
Somebody has a similar version of my .co.uk
jenkers




msg:3112837		 7:42 am on Oct 8, 2006 (gmt 0)

hi,
I think I probably know the answer to this one anyway, hence the reason I never really looked into this before.

I have a website and domain that I registered and built in 99 -lets say
bluewidgetdirectory.co.uk

3 months later another company in the uk registered bluewidgetdirectory.com and put a bogus bluewidgetdirectory on it with just scraped content / generated content.

They are not copying me in any way apart from the fact that they have the .com version of my name and the website makes a pretence at being the same type of site.

i.e people could visit it by accident confusing the domain name and believe that this low-content scraped site is mine.

Is there anything I can do other than offer to buy the domain name from them?

I doubt that they get much traffic or revenue from the site, but it can and possibly is reflecting on my own site.

 

Webwork




msg:3113184		 5:13 pm on Oct 8, 2006 (gmt 0)

The "legal side" of the post is very hard to address since a) without more info we really can't size up the +/- of a legal challenge; and, b) we really don't "do legal" here very well as we're mostly non-legal and the TOS says were shouldn't anyway.

That said, the more generic the subject is, IMHO the less likely you will be able to stake out an exclusive claim to the domain name. IF you Google the root words of the directory name do you get more than a few exact match hits? (Other than links from your own website?) For example: "business directory" = 36,000,000 hits. Hard to argue for exclusive rights to use business directory in a website address. "Doofus directory" = 0 hits. You might want to lay claim to that . . . or not. ;)

It's a fairly complex analysis, to address the particulars of the legal approach, so the best we might offer is to investigate a purchase.

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