Someone has my domain minus the "s"

This company is catching my traffic. What can I do about it?

[tankman]

I recently tried reserving a domain similar to the one I am having success with without the "s" at the end.

To my surprise some company reserved it a couple months ago and has a "pay per click" directory on the topic corresponding to the subject in the domain name.

This company obviously is trying to catch my traffic of people who try to access my site directly but forget to add the "s" at the end.

What can I do about getting this domain? Is there a legal way of going about this?

[rcjordan]

>What can I do about getting this domain? Is there a legal way of going about this?

Unless you have a trademark that this site somehow infringes upon, I'd say there's nothing you can do other than approaching the other domain holder about purchasing it.

[hakre]

sometimes you don't need a trademark for this at all. i had a very suspect situation. a lawyer mailed me to give up my domain, because, he wrote, it would belong to his customer (in a way quite similar it is with yours). it was like a well sounding descriptive name (kind of a musical term, not a product or company) with a '-' in between.

i wrote back to the lawyer but the lawyer never answered. half a year or one year later, another lawyer mailed again. then i wrote back again telling them they can have the name, they should initiate a transfer. this was never done by them. then one day, my domain was gone. i was not notified, not by the nic nor by the isp. i think thats very strange...

[dauction]

I agree with RC on this.. not being abusive but people need to wise up and register both versions of their ..
you'll be able to purchase less than you can hire an attorney (the squatters knows this).

You can try your hand at [icann.org...]

Ther is particularly abusive "speculator" that has over 100,000 domains..lives in hong kong...do a who-is ..if it is him ..he wont sell anyways..

[VictorE]

Just registered the plural version of my domain. Thanks for getting me thinking.

An ounce of prevention ...

Vic

[Fiver]

At an SEO conference in Vegas last year I was lucky enough to talk to a lawyer who specializes in domain name cases, and sits on some board with ICANN. He's actually from Ottawa Canada, near myself.

He surprised me by saying that in a situation like tankmans, someone regging a similar domain, if they have any intention at all of gleaning off of your work and name (heck, even if they didn't, but it's happening anyway) you could easily take that domain from them in a legal setting.

But only if you've been using the domain as a real site for a while, not just holding onto the domain name with no content/identity.

The exact example that got used (because it was a real example from someone in the rooms client) was the domain locos dot com. The word locos is an old latin (?) word meaning crazy, but the owner of the domain said they get loads of mistyped traffic for lycos. The lawyer said that he could very clearly see a case against the owner of locos dot com, and they would likely lose their domain if lycos ever decided to do anything - doesn't matter that the locos domain is it's own word, with an independent meaning, and no provable intention of gleaning traffic.

Of course, how lycos would prove in court that locos gets its type in traffic is a mystery to me... should have asked more questions at the time I guess.

Hey look, I still have the lawyers card. Sticky me if anyone wants to talk to him.

[Shakil]

a couple of points, both from an advertiser at PPCs and a Domain Name owner.

You have a few options, depending on the domain extension (top level or country code)

Bad Intent or Passing Off will usually get the situation resolved (has worked for us)

As will contacting the PPC whos traffic he is showing (also worked for us)

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Ther is particularly abusive "speculator" that has over 100,000 domains..lives in hong kong...do a who-is ..if it is him ..he wont sell anyways..
===========================================================

He will sell, only emailed him once, and transaction was made within 10 days, transferred the domain into our control before our Lawyer released the $$$$$$s.

anything is possible, you just need a lawyer who knows what he is doing.

Shak