Somebody else has registered my domain name - what can I do?
It may happen that you've decided, finally, to register your domain name - based upon your business name or personal name, and yet when you do a whois lookup find that someone in a different part of the world has beaten you to it. What can you do in a situation like this?
Well, the first thing to do is to work out whether you have any chance of legally winning back the domain name. After a flush of high-profile cyber-squatting cases, a new dispute resolution system has come into force in an effort to stop opportunists buying up domain names cheaply with a view to exploiting their natural owners further down the line.
ICANN, the internet corporation fot the assignment of names and numbers have outlined criteria for proving bad faith in the registration of a domain:
- i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or (
- ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or
- (iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
- (iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.
If you're sure you can prove any of the above in relation to the registrant of the domain name you seek, then you can contact any of the approved dispute resolution companies
In practice, though, it may be extremely difficult, and costly, to prove bad faith.
That leaves you with two options:
Firstly you can think up a different domain name. Remember, the domain name is a hugely significant part of how search engines view and list your site, so in some cases your actual business name may not be the best option in any case.
An example. Your company is called Paddy Murphy & Sons, and you sell fishing tackle. The domain name paddy-murphy-and-sons.com is already taken, but by chance you find that fishing-tackle.com is available, or fishing-tackle-paddy-murphy.com. In this case, you'd be well advised to register the domain name that includes your main business. Domain names should be short, easy to remember, and should contain your most important search keywords.
The final alternative, and not one to be sniffed at, is to cut to the chase and make an offer for the already registered domain name. It may well be that the registrant will be happy to offload it, for a small fee. How do you go about this? Well, if you can track the registrant down - through the whois lookup - you could make a straight offer. Increasingly, though, people are turning towards domain broker companies - companies who have experience in evaluating how much a domain name might be worth above its registration value. They can often effect a quick, clean, and relatively painless sale to you of your preferred domain.
If that's the route you choose to go down, we can recommend the market leaders - Sedo. Get in touch with them, and they can evaluate the worth of the domain your after, and go about making an offer for you.