Advice Please: Lawyers threatening me for using "their" domain name

If it's a law firm... Then you should be like..."Well, I payed for it, shouldn't you at least cover the costs?" Or... "Thousands of dollars in court...? Or a few hundred for me? =]"

Eh... If you don't want a potential headache for the future than just nix it bro. Good luck.
 
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Another reason to stay anonymous.

You can't sue who you can't find.

F*ck off lawyers!!

If they win, blacklist, spam, and deindex their site.
 
I would do option 2 and 3 combined. Try to scrape as much money from them
And if they keep bitching on you then just F their site up and make a website stating that the xxxxxx company sucks and index it to google and SEO it above their own site so they wont make any sale ever again :p
 
I wouldn't even respond to there E-mail. If you don't want the domain make them work for it by transferring to another Registrar under a fake name and let it sit until it expires. If the domain is parked with a fake name then they won't come after you because you don't own it.
 
My advice don't contact the lawyers instead contact the clients tell them that you received an e-mail from their lawyers and politely tell them that you'll be willing to transfer the domain to them at an amount less than what they'll need to pursue the case. if they decline register more lookalike domain in registrars located in countries that has diplomatic issues with the us using fake ids, and when they come knocking offer to sell all the domains to them at $50,000.
 
wizzkidd said:
Im now in a predicament because after reading what everyone has wrote above, there are mixed messages coming in. I got even more concerned reading the sh*t that could happen to me if I do challenge them and lose, and also I should not even have contacted them etc. This info made me worried considering that I had recently emailed them asking them to "pay me for it"... well, i've just checked my outbox on my ever so trusty MS Outlook client, and there is my email sitting there - it hadn't even been sent. Arghhh!

So now what? Can we have a little vote or something? I know I shouldn't trust the views from a forum, but you guys between you have a wealth of knowledge and experiences.

Options are:

1) Contact them and say im giving up the domain
2) Offer them to buy the domain off me
3) Stand my ground and simply say "you cant have it, its mine"
4) Strike some sort of deal with them
5) Change the WHOIS info and tell them I sold it
6) Purchase the UK TM of the domain and stand my ground/or then sell it to them
7) Other?

I have until February 2nd to reply.

- Neil.
Click to expand...


Hope that lawyer or client doesnt google a lot and reach at thei thread and check out your options..

Keep it low mate !
If i were you, i would have maybe told them " Alright i didnt realise it was your family trade mark bla bla, but end of the day i purchased it and i dont want to transfer it to you, But after realising its a trade mark domain i am willing to cancel and release the domain back to the registered body, so that anyone else can have it or if you want to buy it from the registrar or even from me let me know. ! bla bla
 
Start your search at www . uspto. gov to see if they trademarked their name.
 
There is some good advice and some sketchy advice in this thread.

If you try to sell it to them for more than what you paid for it, they are going to win in court, easily, because you are trying to make money off of their trademark. Not only that, but you will probably also have to pay some of their legal fees. It used to be a common tactic against domain squatters, send them a letter saying they own the trademark and to stop using it, squatter says "Give me $500 and its a done deal", trademark owner takes it to a judge and has proof positive that you are trying to make money off of it.

Judge finds in the trademark owners favor, 9 times out of 10 they will ask for damages for legal fees, if you cant fly out to wherever the hearing is being held, which will cost you several hundred dollars at least, you get a default judgement against you, which will probably cost you thousands of dollars. Then you will freak out and have no way to pay, they will come after your bank account, even if you are a LLC, it doesn't really provide too much protection except as a tax entity. Ultimately if you cant pay your credit is fucked for years to come, all because you decided to hold on to a worthless .info domain name.

Id just drop it.
 
I thought that you could purchase any domain name regardless of copyright things like that.
 
I agree with most of the above as well.
I went through the same thing. Were both in the US
When it came down to it I offered to sell them the domain at a fraction of what It would cost them in legal fees. I also had the luxury of free legal services and had my attorney write them a nice letter that basically said pay up or blow me.
They paid rather than deal with it all. There is some kind of president about cyber squatting in US courts btw. At least that is what my lawyer said. In the end it's cheaper for them to buy it off you

But they need to provide proof and contact info or they can go and screw themselves.

I should also point out site I had, had nothing to do with the original trademark owners business. So it would not be viewed as cyber squatting. Just the same name.
 
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Trig7 said:
I thought that you could purchase any domain name regardless of copyright things like that.
Click to expand...

You can. Apparently it's what you plan on doing with it that matters. It's common that business will have the same name. So they allow for that. The problem comes when you are misrepresenting the site as another business and potentially damaging reputation, etc...yada...yada... whatever they can prove.
 
I wonder why the law firm did not just buy up the .info to stop this from happening. What is a .info like a dollar or something??? But they are willing to spend thousands to take it from you when you buy it. Doesn't make sense to me but then again neither does a lot of stuff that people do.
 
txhepoker said:
Give it back to them and get on scrapebox and blast the hell out of it and send them down the google penalty path....

Just joking....!!

I agree and let them have it but i would make them do it as professional as they can. Not just an email....

At the end you need to ask yourself what your time is worth...
Click to expand...

There's no scrapebox penalty path with Scrapebox. I used scrapebox on pretty much all my domains and I've never recieved a penalty. In fact they rank alot better than my white hat ones.
 
On one hand:

best advice was search the trademark db. Its not like this stuff is secret. if they hold a trademark it will show up.

pay close attention to what they have trademarked. Trademarks are not blanket and they will need a trademark specifically for the digital area to take it from you.

on the other hand:

if it doesnt have traffic and its not a great domain (.info?) drop it. While they probably dont want the .info they dont want you using it either. is it worth any kind of hassle?
 
Tell them you will not settle for less than $1000 USD. They'll do it, or counter again higher than $500.
 
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