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[DodoMainer.com]

I registered a domain last year that I thought would be great for a charity/NGO, but I only bought the dot.COM because my registrations had been adding up and, to be honest, I didn`t really have faith that anyone would be interested.

I did a couple blog posts and installed Analytics and then forgot about it, but I checked the analytics.

A few months later I noticed that someone started coming to that site everyday from Alexandria Virginia. As there was no real content on that site (at least not enough to come back more than once), I knew they were interested in the domain. They came about 15 times during a 10 day period.

So I went to GoDaddy and checked the dot.ORG for that domain and, sure enough, it had been taken, at about the same time this person started coming to my blog. They didn`t just register the dot.ORG, they did it for 10 years, and forked out the cash for private registration.

This wasn`t some ordinary blogger interested in a domain. I was sure that it must be an institution with money to spend like that.

I did some research into Alexandria, VA. Sure enough, it`s right next to Washington, DC and, according to Wikipedia, it`s the HQ for many large charities and NGOs. I think one of them is interested in my domain name.

So I`m expecting to be contacted at some point in the future by a proxy who will probably say, "O I just love that domain, can I have it for my blog, but I don`t have much money..."

and I will start laughing....

Let me know if you agreed with the assumptions I made.

The person who came to my blog came on the exact same day that the dot.ORG was registered, and in fact they were the only person to visit the blog for a long period of time and they came about 15 different times!

 

[alien51]

This wasn`t some ordinary blogger interested in a domain. I was sure that it must be an institution with money to spend like that.

I can sense the Dark Side is strong with this Padawan. lol

The person who came to my blog came on the exact same day that the dot.ORG was registered, and in fact they were the only person to visit the blog for a long period of time and they came about 15 different times!

They are probably checking you out if your dot.COM is a threat to their dot.ORG, so they are probably scanning your blogs and stuff doing some kind of threat assessment. That's what i would do.

If you are just doing some fancy blogging on that domain of yours, I'll most likely just keep my dot.ORG website (if it was me). Unless you offer me your dot.COM for 50 bucks?

Since you said the end-user was a charity/NGO type, then i believe they would look more LEGIT if they stay on dot.ORG.

I'm not sure if it's worth your time to annoy them by raking up more content on your COM site to battle them neck-to-neck on search results. After all, this is an NGO you would be competing against. You won't be earning any kind of serious money sustaining your domain on search rankings by hoping they get so annoyed with you that they'll try to buy you out to get rid of you getting in their way.

Cementing their dot.ORG for 10 years is probably a sign they'll hold fort on that domain and stay put with it.

The question is, if they won't buy you out, what kind of end-user would be interested to buy a dot.COM domain sitting next to a happily contented and successful dot.ORG? Maybe a domainer will buy you out then exploit the confused traffic by putting ads on its site. But then again, if your confused traffic is looking for a charity/NGO site, and they see your site with lots of ads, they'll probably just exit quickly then scroll down and go to the dot.ORG and find that it's the site they are looking for. So i'm not sure how you can monetize from this kind of confused traffic.

But if they do buy you out, then congrats in advance. If it was me, i'll stay put on my dot.ORG.

 

[DodoMainer.com]

All good questions you raise. Thanks.

I certainly agree that they were doing some kind of risk assessment. If it was a Washington NGO, then they would certainly have to consider the possiblity that they were gonig to be infringing on any kind of trademark I had established.

 

[alien51]

they would certainly have to consider the possiblity that they were gonig to be infringing on any kind of trademark I had established.

So you actually filed paperwork with the patent office to claim trademark on your dot.COM domain name?

If they got into the same "business" on their dot.ORG, I wonder if there`s a possibility of infringement.

I think having identical domain names on different extensions, do not constitute automatic infringement. That's the reason why they allow various extensions to exist in the first place.

But in any case, if you start talking about infringement, are you really sure you want to invest time and money to pursue it against an NGO/Charity website simply because they won't buy your dot.COM?

Some companies do that because obviously they have a brand to protect and they have the money to pursue legal action. But you claim to be just a blogger for that website and it's difficult to defend the argument that your neighbor domain is causing you financial loss due to unfair competition called "infringement"-- especially that you claim both to be charity sites. I think you also have to prove to ICANN that there was "malice" involved when they regged the dot.ORG.

 

[DodoMainer.com]

There are two ways to get trademark. One is through filing a patent application. The other is through the common law i.e. if you start operating a business under a name, then the common law gives you name protection.

However, for trademark to apply (in either situation), you need to be operating a business. In regular commercial situations, it`s pretty clear what`s required. However, for a charity that doesn`t operate for profit....