an interesting situation has come up - a company i have done some work for - they are trying to sell the domain to another company.
now - i initially bought it the domain from the previous owner (through sedo), and registered my companies details as the owner of the domain.
this was fine and some months later it was transfered from my godaddy.com account to the other company's namesco account (as they wanted to have control of it, for dns changes etc).
so the quesiton is, when i do the whois
Domain Name.......... --------.com
Creation Date........ 2005-02-10
Registration Date.... 2007-02-28
Expiry Date.......... 2009-02-10
Organisation Name.... My Company
Organisation Address. My Address
Organisation Address. same for each line
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address.
Admin Name........... Domain Administrator
Admin Address........ Namesco Limited
Admin Address........ Acton House, Perdiswell Park
Admin Address........ Worcester
Admin Address........ WR3 7GD
Admin Address........ England
Admin Address........ GREAT BRITAIN (UK)
Admin Email..........
so.. the domain sits in the company's domain registry.
quesitons
1. how easy is it for them to change the ownership name of the domain (if its sitting in their registry).
2. if my company is still the legal owner of the domain, what rights do i have to have it transfered back to my domain registry.
3. there is no contract stating that i would give them the domain and hand over ownership rights of it, so whats the effect of this on the current owner of the domain.
thanks in advance
tim
In other words, your company technically owns the domain now.
If you have access to their registrar and can get the authorization code, then you can transfer it back to your registrar, but then that might open up a can of legal worms against you.
I know I've changed some of mine from my personal name to a company name, and never heard "boo" from the registrar. I think there used to be some checking on this, but that's long-gone.
Absent a written agreement, what was your verbal understanding? You did, at least, have a verbal understanding, right?
I don't understand why you would pay for a domain for use by a client, nor why either of you would agree to a "loan" of the domain.
In any case, it seems complicated enough to have cried-out for a written agreement. Now you have a mess.
Next time, if the domain is to remain yours, keep it in your possession. If you want somebody else to control DNS, use a third-party DNS service, which the other company will pay for and control. You would use your registrar to set the DNS pointers to the third-party DNS service's servers. The only time you would need to fiddle with anything would be if they changed DNS service providers.
there is no written contract about the ownership of the domain and hence this is why i'm wondering, that if i am still the legal owner of the domain, can i request (via legal channels) to have the domain moved back to my registry. or as you say, if its that easy to change the ownership of them domain, am i out of luck?
thanks for the responses anyway
tim
the verbal agreement was that i would give it to the company. that is because i was being paid to do work for this company.
I think you should step back and consider whether your agreement ever made sense, and whether taking it back is morally (if not legally) correct or fair.
The original agreement had a fatal flaw: you didn't consider what would happen if you would ever stop working for them, if they no longer wanted to use your services, or if the company or site were ever sold - and made no provision for that in your agreement.
You never set a specific date or condition when you would actually "give" the domain to the company. Apparently, you now feel that you haven't received enough income through the work you've done to justify your original expense in acquiring the domain.
Personally, I have quite a distaste for these cases where a developer or designer registers a domain on behalf of a client, and then yanks it back when the client fires them. It's the ugliest kind of job security.
Every couple of months, we hear one of these sad cases here from the opposite perspective - that of the website owner (or would-be website owner...) who wants to know how to get their domain that was never put in their name in the first place.
My advice is always the same - never let anybody register a website for you! Don't let a developer or designer do you the "favor" of registering the domain for you. Sometimes it's a benign act. In other cases, it's the developer/designer trying to trap the website owner into a perpetual contract for services.
In this case, you say you bought the domain from the previous owner, rather than simply registering it, so there may be some considerable sum of money involved.
I think you should discuss this with the site owner and come to some agreement now. It's in his interest to settle it, as the ownership of the domain will be in question otherwise. He could wind-up being sued by the new owner, etc.
On the other hand, yank the domain back using some legal maneuver, and you might have TWO lawsuits land in your lap.
I think what would be fair would be for him to pay you your cost of having acquired the domain originally.
If you've done a good job, I'd hope he'd also make a recommendation to the new owner to use your services. That clearly won't happy if there is an ugly fight to take the domain name back.
