Lawyers asking me to transfer my domain to them

Status
Not open for further replies.
First check if it's legit and if they are serious. As mentioned above there are people sending out fake emails like that.


If you don't give up the domain and they decide to escalate the issue, you'll most likely lose in court, since it's a name of the athlete and you have no reason for regging the name other than to profit from it. Anti cybersquatting laws allow them to demand the max $100K per domain fine. It's not worth the risk, so beware..
 


according to wikipedia
Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
 
Did you have the domain name before this athlete became famous? If, so they don't have a leg to stand on.

I had a company saying they were going to buy my domain names that they had trademarked. I waited for months for my check that never came, and I never heard back from them, so alot of folks are out there scamming. They offered me $500 for the name too.
 
yuwiemp said:
according to wikipedia
Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
Click to expand...

I love that the name of a federal law has the word "squatting" in it. That's something our forefathers never figured on, I guarandamntee it.
 
Relax, keep playing with your domain. Do all sorts of experiments. I would run down the battle and show them what your made up of. Follow the suggestion of Katoved
 
I would say until they send you a final notice, just ignore it.

If it does come to that, I would decide if the domain is valuable enough to fight it otherwise just attempt to sell it to them.

That is generally the way most work, your case is slightly different as it's a name so I am not particuarly sure how that would work, interesting to hear though so keep us posted.
 
The following are some of the emails going back between me and an attorney:

Many thanks for the email. We initiated a domain transfer two weeks ago but has not yet seen a response. The status of each of the domain names currently remains as client-transfer-prohibited. Please at your earliest convenience unlock each of the three domains names currently in question so that the transfer may be completed. After receiving your email today, we went ahead and reset the domain transfer. It is my understanding that you should receive an email from Hostway.com requesting you to complete the process. Once again thank you for your prompt assistance.

Kind Regards,
Lawyer

1&1 is in receipt of a cease and desist letter alleging that your domain
name(s) and/or websites infringe on the trade and service marks of a
third party. Pursuant to the terms and conditions of 1&1's private
domain registration, 1&1 will modify the whois entry for your domain
names to reflect your personal information within five days of this
e-mail.
Please see the attached copy of the cease and desist letter for contact
information.

Sincerely,
Customer Compliance
1&1 Internet Inc.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am the general counsel for Inc. I am writing to you on
behalf of ----------------- ---------------- ----------.com. The
aforementioned three individuals are talent of Inc. An
individual registered, using 1and1 as the registrar, the following three
three domain names: ---------.com, -------------.com,
---------------.com. The person who registered the names registered it with
whois protector which hides his personal information. He has contacted
Inc on several occassions in an attempt to sell the names to
Inc which clearly is a violation of the
Anti-Cybersquatting Piracy Act punishable with penalties of up to
$100,000 for each domain name. I ask that you kindly provide me with the
individual's contact info so I may submit court papers.

Thanks in advance,
Lawyer
________________

After receiving these emails, I registered the lawyers name and asked him if HIS name is trademarked. I think asking the person or org to purchase the domain names may screw you over. Anyone that can help me with this would be greatly appreciated. I tried to contact an attorney about this:

Internet Lawyer, Trademark Infringement Lawyer, Domain Name Dispute Specialist!

DO NOT use this attorney, in fact crap on his shoe if you ever meet him, huge dick on the phone.
 
seo mike's post says it all for me. "If they contacted you via email, FUCK 'EM. If they're serious, they'll contact you via certified mail." I would just ignore them or say ok sure you can have it for 50k until you get a letter in the mail from their lawyers.
 
They finally contacted me via certified mail. It is just frustrating since I have had this domain for almost 8 years and they have never said anything about it. The athlete has known about the site the whole time and has even talked about it on a radio show. It has lots of backlinks, dmoz, wikipedia, all his sponsors sites, there was even a poster they gave out with the url on it, etc. I have lost interest in it so I haven't been updating it lately and it was making $300-$1000/month with adsense. I just didn't want to deal with them so I gave it to them. They are sending me a autographed jersey, big deal. So I guess I wimped out but I would like to know what would have happened if I said no or pushed them a little harder. His official site is firstnamelastname.com and mine was firstame-lastname.com, I ranked #1 for his name. I have another domain pointed to the same site and have perm redirected it over so I am hoping it will still get some traffic. Now that they pissed me off I want to keep beat them in serps. Anyone have any tips on how to become an authoritive site?

Anyone know how I can do a law search for cases the company has been involved in to try to see if they have actually gone to court over something similar before?
 
If you have this for 8 years already, your domain might precede their trademark.

::emp::
 
I think,i'm not sure,that if they have registered company with his name,than they can open case against you,but the company have to be registered before you had your domain name.
I also had to let go some domains like: e-bay.cc microsoftconsole.com,microsoftconsoles.com,but Sony let me keep sonyconsoles.com and sonyconsole.com as long as i promote sony products.So,i don't know why they want the domain from you.Maybe your site is: athlet.com sucks big time??:)
 
Ask them for one million dollars...
mediumdrevil1rt2.jpg
 
I just went through this as well.

One never knows what will be gone after or not.

Tough to sell what people are buying when we cant use the names in URLS, KW's or ads.

Amazes me just how upset some business get when people try to sell their stuff even their pre owned stuff.
 
I took a course in digital and cyber (mostly internet inclusive) law last semester. Off the top of my head:

- You have the right to declare your domain as a fansite based on a trademark.
- You have the right to declare your domain as an unofficial website based on a trademark.
- You have the right to declare your domain as a parody based on a trademark.
- You have the right to declare your domain as a satire based on a trademark.
- You have the right to declare your domain as a preceding origin based on a trademark.
- You have the right to declare your domain as an UNRELATION based on a trademark. (i.e. your website is unassociated with the dude's name, like your dog is named Reggie Bush, or you're simply not talking about the same Reggie Bush).
- You have the right to declare your domain as a parody based on a trademark.
- You have the right to declare your domain as a news item based on a trademark. (i.e. news aggregator for Reggie Bush).

The only real vulnerability is if you're exhibiting open bad faith or trying to claim that you are the official website and breach trademarks in your content. If you look at the history of actual lawsuits involving this situation, the only time the domain was transferred was when the domain owner ran the website as though it was the official website of the trademark and got counts of public deception. Beyond that, you have a lot of ground to stand on.

I think the best way to put it is that there is no default associate by law between TRADEMARK.COM and Trademark until YOU say there is. You can own Gilette.com and sell kittens and unless you associate yourself with razor blades, you're immune.

What I would do is put a statement of unofficial association between you and trademark in a disclaimer.html in your footer next to your copyright. Make sure to use "disclaimer" somewhere on the page of the statement. Internet legal laws are really soft, but they really go a long way in immunizing web businesses and owners. You can even represent yourself in court really well if you need to since there are very few technicalities they can pull on you that you couldn't wikipedia beforehand. Enjoy it now before the internet legal system becomes a big fucking knot.
 
Thanks for that awesome post. Can you PM me so I can put you on retainer? I have a firm in Chicago that wants to represent me, but they want an arm and a leg, and they didn't even know as much as your post.
 
Yeah thanks that was a good post.

I wasn't trying to claim to be the official website, mine was just better and I didn't say I wasn't so everyone assumed it was. He didn't have a official site until a couple months ago. Even his sponsors linked to my site as his official site. I didn't say it was an unofficial website or fan site. Putting up adsense and banners didn't help either probably.
 
Duplicate your original site on a new, more generic, domain and point the other domain you mentioned you still have, at it. You may drop in the SERPs for a while but, with a little work, if you outranked them before, you can do it again.

Also, keep an eye on the domain. You gave them the domain but they're not entitled to the content. If they put up a site that has your old content on it, to try to keep it going like you had it, it's your turn to sue their asses off. The copyright on the content is yours.

I was sorry to see you rolled over and gave it to them but, it's your choice. I'd have fought it. In fact, I had an outfit try to screw me on a patent infringement deal a few years ago and I spent only about $200 with a smart lawyer to make them sit in the corner and lick their wounds. Letters from lawyers don't mean shit... letters back to them from smarter lawyers make things all better.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back