People buying up the .coms from my .co.uk network of sites

[rawkinrich]

Hi,

The company I am employed by run a network of websites, all on .co.uk domains. Some of our competitors have gone out and bought all the .com's and are redirecting them to their websites.

Yes, we should have registered the .com domains when we registered the .co.uk domains.

Is what they have done illegal or broke any copyright laws? Can we claim these domains back? What would be the next step?

Thanks all
Richard

 

[Gottog]

Do you have trademarks on those names?

 

[rawkinrich]

I don't believe we have.

 

[jmcc]

I don't believe we have.

Without a trademark, it would be very difficult to prove anything. However if you have well known businesses on those domains there may be a very slight chance that some 'passing off' legislation could be used. The problem is that unless you have the budget for legal action and intellectual property such as trademarks, any action against this kind of thing is going to be problematic at best and a complete failure at worst.

Regards...jmcc

 

[evertonian7uk]

it is possible to persue common law trademarks, IE trademark from usage, but that would depend on when your compaines were set up etc...

there only real good advise here is to speak to a lawyer about this case, as you do have rights, not as many as if you had the tm though.

 

[rawkinrich]

Thanks for your advice guys.

Richard

 

[dbtbandit67]

yes, you should have bought all available extensions when you could have

believe me, you will save money just buying them rather than filing an ICANN suit and paying a lawyer

 

[thebutler]

Renewal dates

Might be better to wait it out and see if they forget to bother to renew them if they only paid for one year of registration. Did that for a local real estate domain that I wanted. If you make a stink about it they won't forget to renew them.

 

[weblord]

then time to get one, before they get in first.

I don't believe we have.