anyone here ever been threatened with legal action after buying an expired domain?
 

just curious, has anyone run into this situation, where after buying an expired domain the previous owner shows up sometime later and threatens legal action citing evidence of previous economic activity under that name constituting proof of a trademark? especially when it can be shown that the business is a related internet business activity.

If they don't have an actual trademark then they really don't have much to go on. Just because they've done business on the domain before doesn't give them a trademark.

which service do you use? pool.com ? have you tried name.com ?

anyways, it could be the domain you picked up has a trademark name...if that's the case, you should let it go, not worth getting sued.

You could always transfer it to someone overseas.

Like others said, unless he has a trademark there really is nothing he can do. About 5 years ago I had some issues with Netsol. I ended up losing 5 domains (the expired) and I didn't realize that was about to happen (long story).

Anyway, three of them had nothing on them and were no big loss. The other two had about 5 years worth of TGP galleries and free sites on them. When I lost those I lost about 70% of my income. I contacted the new buyer and offered to buy them back, but he wouldn't take the money. I even told him that within a few weeks the people linking to those domains would be blacklisting once they saw them redirecting and the traffic would dry up pretty fast. He still turned me down. I went to a lawyer how basically told my I was screwed and there was nothing I could do.

A month later he came back and wanted to sell them back to me. By now all the traffic was gone and all the domains were blacklisted so they were useless and I turned him down. He should have just taken my 5K offer to buy them back and earned a quick $4930 profit off my domains.

Anyway, sorry for the long venting. I would see if the name you bought is trademarked and if not tell him to leave you alone or make you an offer.

is there an online database to look that up?

All he can really do is take it through domain arbitration at a cost of thousands and they can't do anything but take the domain from you (no penalties) I wouldn't worry about it.

Sounds like a typical adult industry asshat. :disgust

Sorry to hear about your bad experience.

You DO know how to use Google, dont you?

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp

jesus fucking christ

I lost .ca's in arbitration.

Apparently its not legal for you to own a 'township' or 'city name' .ca. At least not if they want it its not.

yes a couple of times. tube names

Do a search for the tm on the link posted

I've heard some tm owners let their domain drop and then sue the person who buys it, it's a slam dunk and they get to brag about it, increase the value of their name, etc...

usually they are full of shit.

rather like a typical domain trader assshat, who thinks that the traffic will stay same, while he has no clue how to monetize it correctly.

i contacted in similar case a guy, who bought expired domain (not mine) with mostly gallery traffic to one specific site and he asked for 20k, while he had some stupid landing page on it. now this domain isnt probably worth a registration free.

I bought a domain name that was set to expire. I got it through pool.com. A home shopping channel sent me a registered letter stating they have been using that "word" on their channel for years and because of that they had legal right to seize the domain from me. They weren't even the original owners of the domain.

I laughed and proceeded to register the .net .org .tv and .us versions of the domain. They made a couple of small offers to buy the domain which were more of an insult to me. They kept telling me that the offers were an attempt to settle the issue amicably and they weren't required to do that. I'm sure getting their law firm to send that letter cost them more than the offers they made me. Eventually they gave up and went away.

I still have the domains...and haven't used them for shit. :D

lol expired domain and someone want to fuck about it? i would send him where he belongs. his lame biz is not my problem

Of course you get threats, and not just empty threats, but actual letters via certified mail from law firms... if someone wants the domain back badly enough, trademark or not, you will lose the domain... (unless you have big pockets and are prepared to fight it) :2 cents:

The absense of a registered trademark does not necessarily mean you are safe. The US is a first use country. If they can prove first use in commerce and can show continued use, that could be a problem.

You can search USPTO.gov for registered trademarks, but this does not solve the threat of unregistered trademarks. Those are harder to find and searches cost around $300.

I don't think you'll find any solid info on this situation with expired domain names. The laws need to be updated. I am not a lawyer, so take this like a grain of salt..... but I would say if they let it expire and didn't use the mark for a long period of time, that will help you. But if this was an accidental expiration and they have a current product or service matching the domain name, you are screwed.

70% of your income was only worth 5k,

how much money do you think he earned running the traffic into the ground.

you should have offered him more money then what he would have gotten running the traffic into the ground.

They cannot claim since they have used the name before they are entitled to the domain and if they did I'd file a trademark for the domain as if they come with that BS it is obvious they have not trademarked the term/name/product or whatever it is.

Trademark lawsuits are very expensive. You should consult a lawyer.

I was never threatened with legal action.

I have only been threatened about being killed in real life at least 5 times by comments such as, "Die", "I'm gonna kill you", "You're gonna get popped", etc.

But, I'm still alive bitches - fuck you!!!

Great answer for a non lawyer......

For those of you that believe a TM has to be registered... there is something called "common law trademark." The major difference between a common law and a registered TM is geographical location in which you can enforce your mark. Common law TMs are usually limited to where YOU do business. Registered TMs give you the ability to enforce through-out the US and world (sometimes). Foreign TMs and EU TMs are even more confusing.

And there is always the Anticyber Squatting Act as well as WIPO. TM law is an area that is confusing even for us lawyers, especially when you start thinking internationally.

so, if I register toronto.ca they can take it from me?

Hm, strange, but not fer for sure!

oh man i lol'd on this one.

you won't see it coming when it happens- all other puffery is just smoke and mirrors

Well, it is kind of a long story. Basically, I had just bought a house and had paid off every cent of debt that I had at the time. So I didn't have a whole lot of cash in the bank. I contacted him and explained the situation to him and asked if he would be willing to sell it back to me. He told me to make him an offer. I said 5K. He told me the traffic the domains had was worth more than that. I told him that in a few weeks the traffic would be next to zero so it really wasn't, but I upped my offer to 7K ( I suppose I could have gotten a home equity loan or something like that to make him a huge offer, but I wanted to find out how much he wanted before doing anything, and getting that loan would take too long. By the time the loan went through the domains would be blacklisted and useless to me). He then replied that at this time he had no interest in selling the domain and that he wouldn't be making a counter offer and that he wasn't interested in any offer I was going to give him if it was anything less than 100K. That was just insane.

There is no way the traffic was worth that. I know what I made each month off of that traffic so there is no way he was making anywhere near that. All he did was redirect the traffic to an FPA that he was changing every day (this tells me it probably wasn't converting worth a damn or he would have kept the same one up for more than a day or two. The even better part was that he left the stats directory unprotected on the domains when he put them on his server. A lot of domains you can just type in www.domain.com/stats and depending on their setup and permissions you might be able to see the stats. So I saw the decline in traffic first hand. The traffic was cut in half within about seven days and withing about two weeks was down to about 15% of what it was. I had contacted every link list and tgp I was submitting to and explained the situation (this way they wouldn't blacklist me, just the domains).

He might have made a few thousand dollars running the traffic into the ground, but it couldn't have been any more than that and I would venture to guess it was probably more like a few hundred dollars. Back then there were some specific niches I was working in and his FPA's were never anything remotely close to that so people were coming to the site expecting one thing and getting nothing but an add for something else. That doesn't tend to covert very well.

So long story short, after about 2-3 weeks I probably could have bought the domains back at a low price, but then I would have had to go back and try to get them unblacklisted and that could have been a long process that may have never worked so I decided it wasn't worth the effort and just started over on some stuff.