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| quote: | Originally posted by tehlord
Domain names should become available again after say 28 days if they're not used, and if the original owner wanted to sit on it, it should become progressively more expensive to do so. |
There was a whole debate about this a few years back, and it came to a climax over a UK web address.
Basically, this guy had snapped up baa.com, shortly after the British Aerospace Association (FAA to you yanks) registered BAA as their trademark (and that stuff is public record so he probebly was searching the lists of major companies etc). They guy had clearly just bought it and as he could see a goldmine in it. He quickly did a site about sheep ("baa" lol) and then BAA started making enquiries about his legal ownership and it got messy.
Basically BAA offered him £8,000 for a site that got barely any hits and he didn't actually sell anything on. He countered, asking for at least £2,000,000. He tried to play hardball with them for about 8 months, but long story short, BAA ended up getting the site as they had an army of lawyers ready to generate legal fees that would have put the guy out on the street. The other thing was when there is a dispute of this nature, it all comes down to mitigation; who owns the name in a recorded legal basis/who has sold goods under that name/who was there first and in what territory/etc.
Another example is Sasha:
Around 5 years ago there was a big dispute over who was allowed to use the name; DJ Sasha (Alexander Coe) or Sasha (that cheesey boyband singer who is quite a big name in Nothern Europe).
Went to court and it was decided, mainly on the basis of who had sold in which territory first, that Mr.Coe would get the rights to use Sasha in the USA, Canada, Japan, UK, Ireland and France, but the other Sasha would retain Germany, Switzerland and Austria, mainly hinging on the legal basis that even though Mr Coe had sold records in those places long before, they were all foreign imports, not on domestic labels in those countries, whereas the cheesey Sasha had been signed to domestic labels and had therefore entered the market proper first with that name.
So in that case it comes down simply to first established commercial usage.
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