alt Hacker NewsSomething I've wondered... if you publicly say that a domain is for sale and someone has a trademark for it would you automatically lose in arbitration?
Around 1998 I registered a domain. Sony registered a trademark with the same name a few years after that. Someone on a Gmail account asked if he could buy it - I later found out he worked for Sony. I told him no - it's for a game I've been working on. I went on a vacation for a month and when I got back there was a fedex package filled with documents from Sony saying I'm violating their trademark and they'll take the domain.
I got a lawyer and he told me that I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. But he also told me that in order to fight the trademark it would probably cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce...
In the end I ended up selling it to Sony but through my lawyer - I never stated it was for sale. But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.
Replies
>But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.
UDRP:
https://www.icann.org/en/contracted-parties/consensus-polici...
Are you allowed to share how much (roughly) you sold it for?
This has been my understanding. I was told by lawyer in in th 90's that it would be described as squatting in court.
A reply said this, but it's dead:
>If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. [...]
>if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark [...]
I disagree, but they made a point and did so clearly.
Why that person felt someone else's chosen commercial use of a domain should trump anyone's non-commercial (or less commercial) use, I don't know.
All business assets are for sale at the right price, right? Even whilst living by the business at a particular domain, I'd have sold that domain for £200k, probably a lot less. Same as for any business asset, even (especially?) those in commercial use.
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> I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. [...] So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce...
If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. I'm sure if you finished you game and offered it for sale on that domain, you'd be fine. You're actually using it and in a non-infringing way.
So yes, if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark, but alas...
I tried to register a domain like acme.stream through Cloudflare Registrar and it asked me to affirm I had Acme Widgets Corp.'s permission [edit: I might be wrong about this part, since I'm in a totally different niche, but the pop-up freaked me out]. I went with a different domain.