The company I work for has just had a cold call from a domain registrar here in the UK <snip>. The caller identified himself, and then went on to say they had been contacted by an individual or company wishing to purchase all tld's that are directly related to our company name, and that they were wishing to register these names for a 10 year period. We currently own the .com and .co.uk. Has anyone been contacted by this company or another with this sort of selling technique.
All help on the matter is greatly appreciated.
TIA,
-Gs
added: Also what rights do we have with our company name being registered and the domains in question being our company name?
[edited by: Alternative_Future at 10:50 am (utc) on Feb. 7, 2007]
[edited by: Webwork at 12:38 pm (utc) on Feb. 7, 2007]
[edit reason] WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]
Thanks for your reply, yeah after hunting around a little more I gathered it was a scam and that the company mentioned was at the centre of it. Can you remember what rights we have as a company to our company name being used with another tld i.e. company.com & company.co.uk belong to the company I work for but company.biz and .info are still available. I informed the company that its not really worth while buying these other tld's a while back. But now I am just curious to what rights we have if someone else were to use them. The company I work for is registered Company Ltd is there anything else we should have in place to protect ourselves from this?
Again many thanks,
-Gs
A_F, concerning "rights to our name" there are entire books written on the subject, so there's no simple answer.
Domain names are cheap enough to register, likely far less expensive than hiring an IP lawyer, so if you want to control all versions you might simply register them and consider it a cost of doing business in an globally connected world.
Then again, once you do that, you might be contacted by another company with the same name, in another part of the world, that takes offense and . . .
You see how this can go? :) Good luck.
P.S. Sorry about the edit. I saw you obscured much of the company's name, but it was still identifiable. I just finished the 'cover up' job. ;) We focus on the methods and not the names when asking questions about "scams".
[edited by: Webwork at 12:42 pm (utc) on Feb. 7, 2007]
Thanks for your response, and your edit ;)
The question about using other tld's was more in reference to the likes of amazon, google such of branding there are laws against people registering similar and identical domains with other tlds is there not? Please correct me if I am wrong here.
TIA,
-Gs
The easiest suggestion is to "roll your own" and not to attempt to trade off famous marks, such as Amazon. You might have a website about Amazon adventures and never fear about using Amazon in your URL. However, if you open an online bookstore that might raise different flags.
So without the time, hassle and lawyers fees taken into account a single URDP will buy you 150 domain years of registrations.
That figure equals 150 years, but once you divide that by 10 other tld's this takes it to 10 years. If any other tld's are announced in future this can grow somewhat more. By trade marking our company name which can also assist with the trademark of our domain there might be some other legal benefits to be had.
I am right in thinking if someone were then to use our company name in hidden text on their site this would be an infringement on our trademark yes or no?
What I am trying to do is balance out the best way forward, I do realize the cost of these other domains equates to practically nothing, but wouldn’t trade marking our company name not be a better step forward? A competitor has started to use our company name in hidden text on his site and he also uses adwords to be shown on the SERP's for our company name. Trade marking should help prevent this also?
TIA,
-Gs
[edited by: Alternative_Future at 3:31 pm (utc) on Feb. 7, 2007]
