magnus

I registered an EU domain when these domains became available to the general public, after the sunrise period, a couple years back. This week I received a solicitors letter stating abusive registration and demanding I give up the domain.

The name is, their solicitors claim, one of their many trademarks. They are a large international company and run a popular website and own and use both the .com and .net versions of my .eu domain. It is not the name of the company. The .com site gets a huge number of visits and the blurb on their .com site claims a large number of registered users.

When I did a trademark search I discovered it is registered as a trademark, but to a different company. This company is probably part of this larger company.

Without any work on the site I see that my eu domain is number two in the Google results when searching for the name and gets some traffic to a single page of adverts.

My question is should I just give it up to them?

Surely they ought to have registered the domain during the sunrise period if they wanted it.

Any advice appreciated

retired_member6

Tell them the process is long winded and could take months and years to resolve, often ending up in court, there's no way of knowing which way the decision will fall and in most cases trademark is difficult to claim in any situation.

As you have contacted me and clearly wish to proceed with court action and I am more than willing to fight you in court, if it should happen to end up there, let's both not waste out time and spend thousands and come to an arrangement instead, an offer we both can agree on and which can eb sorted in hours not months, alternatively, proceed with your legal action.

Something similar got me £500.

I got taken to task by a solicitor from a solicitor, that got me £800.

You just got to go with how you feel, no one here is going to lose money by giving you advice. I'm not either. I advise strongly that you do not use my words as I'm arrogant, stubborn and rarely give in once something has started.

However, something along similar lines could be useful. Solicitors aint the law, they're just the start of saying hello, think of them as sending a Birthday card, an how you doing, we know you're there, shot of the bow, let's talk. Nothing more, nothing less, they're only solicitors - they bleed like everyone else, different coloured blood, but bleed neverthless.

SecNam

thats a good way of descrbing them

accelerator

You shouldn't necessarily just give it to them. If you regd the name in good faith and weren't aware it was a trademark name, then you just have to prove that was the case. Could the name be described as generic, i.e. a common term that anyone could have rights to, or is it obviously something that belongs to the company challenging for it?

Rgds

Accelerator

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GreyWing

Personally,

I'd write to the solicitors but never sign anything, or set up a proxy temporary email account somewhere. You may think you are talking off the record, but they are so sneaky they'll use it against you.

Least if you haven't signed anything you can always say "I never wrote it"

One thing with international law and EU trademarks is that they don't always respect the fact that you were talking "without prejudice".

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Beasty

Hey, that's a bit harsh. My blood's green, just like everyone elses!

magnus

I'll probably just give up on this one, but, your advice on this thread and others has been very useful. Super forum!

mat

Why not just pass it on to someone on here?? Theres usualy a few takers for domains like this

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