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Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Legal rights to a domain name?


Trey
04-07-2002, 06:17 PM
I have a friend who currently runs a website. His site is hosted by another company who also had the ownership of the domain name of the site. Recently, the host notified my friend that they did not intend on renewing the domain name, but they would still allow him to use thier webspace. My friend didn't see it as that big of a problem, because he figured he would just purchase the domain name once the contract ran out with the host. Well, several days after the host site was no longer supposed to be under the ownership of the host, it still was showing as being owned by them, and unavailable to purchase. So when the name was actually going to be available was unknown. My friend was scheduled to leave out of town for about a week, and figured he would just buy it when he got back. It just happened that the URL was released right after my friend left out of town. The owner of a rival site caught wind of this, and he purchased the domain name, and redirected it straight to his site. So now, every time someone trys to go to my friend's site, they are redirected to his.

Is there a way that my friend can still legally get the name back, considering he was using it, and he can prove that he was using it originally, and it was the name of his site?

Thanks

NDD
04-07-2002, 07:23 PM
Pay for your webspace in time :(

As far as I understand it, the domain is no longer belongs to him after the contract runs off. On the other side, that notification that he got is quite questionable. Can you give here the full text of this ? Some of us may understand it better ...

Trey
04-08-2002, 02:24 PM
Originally posted by ND
Can you give here the full text of this ?

I'm not sure exactly what your asking for.:confused:

dmoltrup
04-10-2002, 12:35 AM
'ND' seems to mean the contract and the nitification that your friend has. Contracts have more loop holes than a rollercoaster factory. :D

NDD
04-10-2002, 08:21 PM
Yep, give us some info ...

userserver
04-11-2002, 01:06 AM
Sorry, but your friend is SOL (unless the unlikely situation exists where he has some sort of registered trademark or copyright that might be infringed by the current domain name usage).

There are very few legal challenges to usage of an appropriately registered (paid for) domain name.