Expired Domain (Grab it or not)

They look like they are the type of people with Lawyers.

[skippy]

Just a quick question for those with experience buying expired domains. This is the first time I have looked at buying an expired domain and I wonder if I am going to have troubles.

I see a domain that is set to expire and I would like to grab it. No SEO on it and very little backlinks but I like the name and would like to develop it for the long term. The only problem is these people look like they have lawyers. Should I just forget it or grab it. If I grab it what type of problems could I run into.

[Rodney]

why not contact them to see if they are still interested in the domain and give them a little heads up on the expiration?

If they aren't using it anymore, then you've got free reign.

If they are going to use it, then you've saved yourself some headache from lawyers and earned some good business karma :) Hopefully, they'll be able to recover their domain.

[mcavic]

If it was me, I'd go ahead and grab it. They get about 65 days to reclaim it before it's deleted, which should generally be plenty of time.

If they do decide to get it back from you, they'll either ask you to relinquish it, initiate a dispute process, or maybe offer to buy it back if they're nice.

If it's a generic domain name, and not trademarked, then you have free reign.

[Webwork]

If there are trademark issues then factor in whether you want to be one of the upcoming cases where cybersquatters are taken all the way to judgment and bankruptcy.

They've done it to file sharers.

They will do it to typosquatters and the companies that enable the typosquatters, etc. to profit from their marks.

Tic-toc.

Promise.

Volunteers?

[ogletree]

I think the real question is: Is it worth the risk to get it, put a lot of work into, and it become successful and 1 year from now they decide it's theirs and lawyers get involved.

Cool run on sentence huh.

[nzmatt]

Let them know - you have to take a chance either way.

Point them to this post and let them know you started it and have chosen to go about it all the "nice" way...