This family business has numerous links established and changing domain names would be a real pain.
So how can I help this lady? She certainly has larger issues on her mind, yet I think that if this problem could be resolved she would be grateful.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Duhboy
At any rate if you filed a wipo complaint, the minimum cost is (I believe) $1500 for filing, plus your legal fees.
If it doesn't have a lot of PR and traffic - you should be able to acquire it for a couple of hundred dollars.
That's just how the rules of the domain industry work: the moment you stop paying (and allow too much time to elapse), you lose ALL rights to the domain name.
If the domain name does not incorporate a trademark (which would give you additional protection through WIPO, as already mentioned) you're going to have to re-purchase it... and if that's the only avenue open to you, you need to be as non-confrontational as possible in doing so. Most large players have thousands of domains or more, and won't take kindly to any attempt at "strong arm" tactics.
No they don't. They do that to get maximum revenue for the domain with pre-existing traffic with minimal effort.
Porn spammers are people. You may very well get a reasonable human at the other end of the email.
Just tell them a reasonable excuse - "My client was ill and the domain expired, this domain belongs to a family business. We understand you have invested money in purchasing this domain (from a company like Pool) and we'd be interested in negotiating the repurchase.
I know because this happened to two people I know, one client and one acquaintance - and I was able to negotiate the repurchase.
After trying to play nice determine the source of the inbound links and ask them to delink because people who click - thinking they will get Company ABC - will actually get porn. That's round 1. Kill the traffic and you kill the value of the domain.
Round 2: If it's really important and your client is being "held hostage" then find a creative and aggressive lawyer. If my memory serves me, not so long ago the business of using typo domains to direct "innocents", likely children, to porn sites was made a federal crime. You might want to explore this angle.
Take a look here: [uspto.gov...]
And there's a nice analysis of this law here:
[keytlaw.com...]
It's possible that the public policy behind the federal law could serve as a basis for a civil lawsuit here - where someone is pretty obviously trading on your client's company's good name and reputation, to their detriment. You can probably find an expert to testify to the practice of snapping up expired domains and using them for their existing traffic. If you file the lawsuit and survive the initial flurry of motions to throw it out chances are you will get to prove to a jury how this character makes it a habit of trading on other people's good names and unfortunate domain drops. I can't imagine a jury would take long to deliver the bad news and possibly bankrupt the bad actor.
Play nice first. Chances are money will talk and it won't be a fortune. If that fails miserably then there are other options.
The main thing is to be polite and explain the situation.
Good Luck
Changes are that the new owner owns many names and will hate to spend time on this issue - so write a real nice email with clear facts (don't try to bull#*$! them, they will smell it from 1000 miles) and the new owner will give it back to you.
If that does not work, contact his host as I dont know of any adult host who tolerates linking from expired non-adult domains to adult sites.
Dont worry, I am sure you get that domain back.
surprised me quite a bit at the time.
