Forum Moderators: not2easy
Unfortunately, if you are a direct competitor, you could probably run in to problems if you grab it - particularly when I would assume if they are doing a lot of on-air spending, they have deep pockets.
Just like in trademarks, which I would guess they have as well, if you are using the same name, in the same industry, using THEIR company name in YOUR registered .com domain would probably get you in court in a hurry.
Probably the safest thing is for some kid to pick up the .com for his neighborhood blog, then sell it to the guy a year later for 5 grand - OR - if you wanted to be a good samaritan, call him and let him know the errors of his ways. ;)
Steve
Probably the safest thing is for some kid to pick up the .com for his neighborhood blog
Better still, pay the kid if he'll let you register it in his name. Heck, I'll do it for you, I could always some extra traffic ;P
If he is just using a lot of common keywords relating to his industry (i.e. accidentclaim as you point out), this takes on a whole new (and much better) outlook.
If these are common words, I would feel more comfortable with it, but it may be worth a quick call to a neighborhood IP attorney to make sure.
Are you in the United States? For some reason, I had you placed in the UK or Europe because of something you said a wile ago.
I think that if you bought them up, that you should at least put up some pages that deal with that specific term, and possibly even put up a separate site.
That way, you can prove a reason for having those domains instead of just hijacking his campaign. Then you can always claim that you were using it even before his big TV campaign. You will also be serving your clients better by taking them directly to the information they are looking for.
The impression I'm getting is that if you snatch up that domain, put something up there that is related to something that for is for you or your business. Don't put something up there that is an obvious attempt to slam his business (or confuse people away from his business). But if the keywords are not exclusive to him, then he has no specific claim on them.
For instance, I have a domain that uses a few combined keywords that are very explicit in describing the content of my site. A lot of other people (unrelated to me, in all parts of the world) use varations of those same keywords for their site. I cannot imagine how anyone can take special claim to the keywords. My site is one of (but not the most) popular ones, but I wouldn't try to bully someone who had a less successful site out of the domain. I have absolutely no right. As long as their site has something to do with the keywords in the domain, then they are using the domain name in good faith.
And on the other side of the coin, I have another domain that I maintain, but it isn't very big and isn't very popular but it's important to me. I bought it many years ago (or many years ago in Internet terms). The word(s) in the domain relate to a family name. I had a guy write me, wanting to buy up my domain name for his business, which uses the same name. I declined. He probably has more use for the domain name than I do (from a business standpoint, anyway), but I got there first, and had a very legitimate and obvious reason for wanting to use it. There are quite a few other people and groups which I am sure would love to have the domain, but I got to it first. Too bad. I am using it in good faith, and it does get traffic (not a lot, but it gets some), it is useful to me and I am not doing anything wrong in not giving it up.
Sorry, I started to ramble there. ;-) And once again, I am not a lawyer, so I could be wrong about some of my opinions.
I believe the worst that could happen is that he could go to ICANN and ask them to determine whether the domain had been registered in bad faith (at a not inconsiderable expense).
If you the domain is truly generic legal phrases - he should sue his internet consultant, and not you.
IANAL. :P
