Domain dispute

European government office claim my .com

[havarian]

An European government office, which own the site.ccTLD, claims the right for my site.com, i have not been able to find similar cases, does anybody here have a qualified opinion except, that i contact a specialized law company, or knows of any preceding cases.
Regards Havarian

[rcjordan]

search on "Barcelona"

[havarian]

Thx Jordan
By the way it looks like barcelona.com still is us owned?
I think my case differ in two ways,
1. my site is not commercial
2. The office name is not a trademark at least not outside that country
Regards havarian

[Receptional]

If you need a real professional to fight your corner, I know a guy - sticky me - but he ain't cheap...

If you want to go find out everything yourself, it's very long winded at [icann.org...] to start.

Dixon.

[rcjordan]

>not commercial

Probably doesn't matter.

There were a few of these coming out of African countries (as I recall) a year or so ago. In general, if this action is being taken by a legitimate European governmental agency I think you'd best be planning for ICANN arbitration.

<added>
Though the threat has lessened somewhat, you'd better verse yourself in how not to trip into reverse hijacking.

[havarian]

Dixon
Yes thx have read the rules, hence the mention of non commercial site.

Jordan thx for the warning, regarding reverse hijacking

regards Havarian

[Dan_Norder]

If you are looking at the Barcelona.com decision, be aware that the decision to take it away from the owner and give it to the city of Barcelona was overruled by a court case and that subsequent UDRP decisions have confirmed the rights of the original owners.

Also look into the newzealand.com case, for which the country ended up wasting lots of money, looking like idiots, and having to buy it from the owner anyway.

You should probably be clear, although it depends upon the exact name of the name (though less so in this case than others from the sound of it).

I would recommend politely telling them that you can see no reason to believe they have a right to the name and that they should provide all the proper legal documentation about why they think otherwise. You want to give a good faith look at their claims, not just cave in to them.