Ask HN: How do you deal with domain squatters? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with domain squatters?

15 pointsone-off16 comments

I work for a well known, but very small startup that does not have a dedicated legal staff, nor the money to pay for one. A more-well-known competitor of ours recently registered a domain that is a one letter transposition of our main domain, and redirected it to their homepage. The name of our site is not a generic term, and as far as I can tell this is a willful violation of anti-cyberquatting laws: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.1255.IS:=

The problem is, how does a small business like ours approach this? We have attempted to contact the competitor directly, but been blown off. Do we bite the bullet and hire a lawyer, hoping that we can win enough money to pay for them? Do trademark attorneys work like personal injury attorneys, and not collect unless victorious? We've never had to deal with major legal issues before, and this is somewhat overwhelming.

(I've created a one-post account for this as I don't want to needlessly complicate the matter by divulging the identities of the involved companies.)

I would send a certified letter to your competitor notifying them that you will be filing a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) complaint, unless they transfer the domain to you by a certain day:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDRP

* http://www.internic.net/faqs/udrp.html

You may won't hear back from your competitor, but you will win the UDRP complaint after about two months. You'll be out like $1.5-2k and you can't recover costs, but you'll have the domain back.

You can almost always talk to lawyers for free, on an initial consultation. They're happy to talk to you in exchange for the opportunity to get your business. That will yield enough information to figure out whether it's worth proceeding. They should be able to tell you things like how much it will cost, and what the likely outcome is.

Thanks, this is probably the best advice. Having never dealt with lawyers on a professional level, I figured they would start draining our money immediately upon contact.

Spend at least some to get a real lawyer opinion. Should cost you a few hundred dollars for some hours of his time. Ask him to present you with several options, there's a whole spectre in the middle of lawsuit and doing nothing.

For example, you've already contacted the company, so at least it seems you've made them aware that you think there's a problem, which only a lawyer can tell if it'll help you in the future you decide to sue them.

You can potentially try something more grass roots and start blogging/twittering about it.

No idea what type of response you will get but people love rooting for the underdog.

To take action against a third party that has bought a domain name that you believe is in breach of your identity you need to satisfy 3 criteria;

A) Name is identical or confusing to a trade or service mark. B) The registrant has no claim to the name C) The name is being used in bad faith

If you can prove all 3 criteria you can appeal to the registry. If the extension is .uk you would approach Nominet, they have a DRS (Dispute Resolution Service) procedure which is free of charge and details can be found at http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes

Each extension internationally will have different rules and procedures. You can contact us directly at http://www.names.co.uk/obp-recovery-services.html and we will outline your particular case and offer advice as to your next step. There is no obligation to use myself to carry out the recovery on your behalf.

Somebody did this to me, too. I've never bothered to take action about it. Realistically, what harm is this doing your business? Customers who weren't getting to your website anyway aren't getting to your website. A microscopic number of customers, actually, since direct navigation is all but dead these days -- thanks, Google. If you doubt me, pick another off-by-one domain name and typosquat yourself, then read your HTTP logs.

Some people on the Internet are jerks. Oh well, you've got more profitable uses of your time than to worry about them.

We actually have about 30 visitors per day coming to our site from searches on this exact misspelling (which google knows is a misspelling). Based on the number of people searching for our domain name including the .com, this translates to a few hundred missed visitors per day. I hope that people who type this into their location bar realize their error, but the site they visit is a direct competitor, so I'm sure a few visitors stick.

Call up any lawyer in your area charging less than $200/hour, explain your situation in less than 15 minutes, say that you are willing to pay him/her $100 just to send that competitor a formal letter demanding them to stop the redirection or threaten further legal action.

This sometimes works, i.e., assuming your competitor is not well funded enough to afford a lawyer either. Otherwise? I don't know, do something similar to your competitor?

I would get over it and focus your attention on making a great product. Having a great domain name is not going to make your business a success.

If you trademarked the original, its like an automatic go card for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution. Send the UDRP folks your trademark papers and they'll yank the domain from the squatter and deliver it, silver platter style to your registrar of choice.

You do trademark all of the domains you register for your startup, right?

To address one of your sub-questions: you can generally find a lawyer in any field who will work 'on contingency' (meaning they get paid a percentage of damages awarded), but they'll only take your case if there's a possibility of a substantial award, which seems unlikely in your case.

can I ask you if you had trademarked your name? I was recently asked a similar question by someone else. He had registered a domain through gandi and a minute later as he went to register the plural, he discovered it was taken in that instant. I imagined that there was little he could do legally if he had not trademarked the term prior. Neither of us know how someone knew to register the plural or whether it had anything to do with gandi. It was registered anonymously through iregistry.

It is trademarked, which also complicates the issue as we're obligated to defend our marks.

Yes, but this also gives you more legal leverage in most cases.

send them a cease and desist letter, a lot of people will roll over right away

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