Does a business who obtains a domain name though wh company own it?

[smithaa02]

So here is the problem I'm seeing all the time...

My webhosting company frequently would like to take over competing websites, but potential clients say this won't work because their current web hosting company owns the domain.

So say "XYZ Hardware" has xyzhardware.com, but acme webhosting registered the domain on their behalf (say through godaddy). XYZ hardware would love to have xyzhardware.com hosted on our servers, but acme webhosting says you can't do that because they 'own' the domain name.

Is this right/legal? Is there recourse? Is there any documentation on this issue on the web?

[engine]

The domain owner should be listed in the whois. Check that first of all.

Check the terms and conditions of registration.

[smithaa02]

In a particular case I'm looking at it is through godaddy.

But when I query who.godaddy.com, I get a number of values...:

'Registrant', 'Administrative Contact', and 'Technical Contact'.

In this case Registrant refers to the proper business, but the latter two refer to the webhosting company. Does this mean the business and not the webhosting company has legal control over that domain name?

[engine]

The key one is the registrant: They are the legal owners. If that's the 'proper business' and not the hosting company, then, check the hosting company terms and conditions regarding transfers.

[smithaa02]

So that's good news...

For future reference, if business is not listed as the registrant, but still pays for web hosting company for the domain and was the one who came up with the idea of obtaining the domain, do they have legal rights to the domain?

[piatkow]

There may be a separate contract to have both domain name and hosting managed by the same company.

For future reference, if business is not listed as the registrant, but still pays for web hosting company for the domain and was the one who came up with the idea of obtaining the domain, do they have legal rights to the domain?

There are potentially over 190 different answers to that as it will depend on the laws of the country concerned.

[kaled]

If the domain name is the same as the company name AND the company name was registered first, then the domain name may have little value to anyone else since a UDRP decision would almost certainly go to the company. However, it may depend partly on how generic the name is and whether the domain name was a .com or country-specific.

If a host offers to register a domain name on your behalf (and include it in the price) then you own the domain - you've paid for it, you can move it as soon as the minimum period expires. However, if they registered the domain in their own name, it may require court action to enforce this and the exact wording in both the offer and the contract may be crucial.

Kaled.