so someone has registerd a .com.au domain that someone i know wants to use. the person who wants to use this domain has the word to be used for the domain trademarked and copyrighted. There is only one problem, the domain is currently being 'sat on' by one of those companies that do nothing with domains expect list random search results on them.

I'm wondering what the laws are for my friend to be able to take the domain from this 'sitter' company? She owns the company and has trademark and copyright on the company name which would be used as the domain name?

She can buy it if she wants, and they're willing to sell it.
I think Maxe (on here) is in the business of selling Domain names, or at least was.

Talk to the auDA and see if it can get reclaimed.

f*** all. I've registered a complaint, but at the end of the day you generally have to offer the "sitter" company money. I registered a business name and abn in one day and the same day the forms got approved, someone bought out the .com.au of the name. I complained but being an IT related business name and an IT related domain name, the sitter company was an IT based company too and had the same claim that I did to it. I offered them 100 dollars (before i registered the company name, the domain name was worth 15). They countered with $1000. I told them that they could keep it and went with a hyphen in the domain name instead.

Sleazy companies wroughting the system. Buy 100 cheap 15 dollar domain names as people register their business and chances are that a few will pay their retarded 1000 dollars i guess.

They still own it. http://www.homeit.com.au/

its pretty tough, we had this happen at work, and we have in house lawyers etc involved and we ended up paying out. They need the most minimal of connection to the name even if you have trademarks etc. If they have a connection they usually can keep it. Good luck.

im just taking a stab in the dark, but did you register yours at ho-meit.com.au?

Yeah you have to be very careful with your domain names. I check if they exist by typing the domain into Firefox only - never use those search forms on a domain registration site until you are ready to actually register the domain. Also register all the main similar domains around it (i.e., .net, .com, .org, etc) - otherwise ad domain squatters will.

You need an ABN to register a .com.au but more other domain extensions you don't need anything.

Yeah I've been in this situation a couple times. Once my domain registrar went out of business, they gave their domains to another company, who immediately stuck those search landing pages on in. I emailed the company a couple times but got no response. In the end I had to wait it out a few years. What a pain in the arse.

I'm currently also waiting out a domain because someone didn't pay and I want to snatch it when it gets deleted.

You can try getting at them under the "bad faith intent" clause that ICANN have invoked on a few ocasions. Basically it means that someone registered the domain with explicit intent to sell it to a trademark/copyright holder for profit.

I had a guy I used to work with in VIC who had the domain aussierules.com, he was using it for his kids football competition. He got a letter from Greg Normans lawyers asking him how much he wanted for it (GN had a yacht called aussierules). He was too smart for their tricks and refused their requests. They eventually offered him $25K for it which he happily took. Trick is if he had named a price they could claim he was just squatting there to get the money, once they offered to buy it for a sum then its all fair.

i look after a lot of domains from around the world and i can say the best way to ensure your name is to have a trademark

if you have this icann will force other owners to hand over the domain.

also pinky.. dont type a domain into a browser, any squatter worth his salt will log all visitor IP's to see if your coming from a company, we often use an anon bidding via our registrar so its really important not to visit the site form a company computer as they will see right away that a person from heineken is poking around and the price goes up,

the best way is to search whois at the root, either icann or the local nic responsible for the cctld - for australia its melbourne IT - dont do whois searches via anyone else, i know a site that would register a domain if it was available and park it as soon as you tried to search whois or 'check availability' via there site, then try to sell the domain back to you

anyway we successfully managed to transfer .com.au so i'm happy

i know a site that would register a domain if it was available and park it as soon as you tried to search whois or 'check availability' via there site,

A few years back was looking to register a domain and every one i searched would be taken within 24hrs of using this site to check. Realized what was happening and wrote a script to submit random searches for days, wonder how much that cost em.

lots of tin foil hats up ITT
just use a shell, whois -h whois.ausregistry.com.au [domain name]

there's no secret squirrel business going on with whois servers

just fyi, I own 'bj.com.au' and I've been offered >$1k for it heaps of times
I'm holding out for $10k :D

it's my initials so everyone can go diaf if they make a claim to it ;)

, wonder how much that cost em.

Nothing?
If they cancel within a few days they don't have to pay, so if you don't try to buy it from them they just cancel it.

Geektools is good for whois.

You don't need an abn to get a .com or a .com.au
My hosting service has provided sites with these addresses to the people I design sites for.
If .com.au is stolen try another suffix

You don't need an abn to get a .com or a .com.au

every site I've read suggests otherwise; can you point me to a domain registrar that does not require an ABN to get a .com.au ? Cuz I'd like to know about them!

yeah it's a "legal requirement" but back in the day we used to do some dodge stuff with registries
just put in any old ABN/BRN and they were happy

these days some of them ask you questions like 'exactly how does this ABN fit with this domain name' and you have to answer, it's then read by a human before being approved/denied

My hosting company has an abn of course but the person who is using the hosting service doesn't.

My hosting company has an abn of course but the person who is using the hosting service doesn't.

So the hosting company actualy "owns" the domain name, which realy is pretty wrong from the customers perspective and from the way its meant to be done with .com.au's which is meant to stop people who arent business from getting them.

If .com.au is stolen try another suffix

This is the worst advice ever. Even worse than the suggestion of yelling "SURELY!" in the correct social context.

Use the correct domain name for your organisation. If it's a commercial and registered business in Australia, don't use anything other than .com.au - or at least HTTP 301 your .com.au if you have it hosted as a .com (or vice-versa).

If you're an incorprated body or not-for-profit, use .org.au , etc.

If you're a pr0n site use .xxx (Heh, I wish this would bloody come into affect already, it's so obviously the right way forward).

I prefer .net for my own stuff but you can't stop some people taking themselves seriously.
If they want a business like name they go .com
and .com is international so i don't think there is a problem there

hmm.. www.qgl.com goes to http://www.tangy.com/

Yeh moving everything to .xxx so the r.wingers have a name they can lobby and attack. The general blanket of .com is the only thing keeping the internet free.

Well, with my entities I work on the principle that you should be able to guess the website domain.

As a result the business name should be very short, Google'able, very easy to spell and unique (i.e., not a dictionary word).

Quick example off the top of my head, "RAVEZ". If you say that word to the majority of people then they should know how to spell it without thinking. If it's a commercial Australian business then the domain should be at ravez.com.au and I would own and HTTP 301 ravez.net.au, ravez.net and ravez.com and maybe some others depending on where I'm doing business.

Edit: Not the best example but you get the idea. I usually go for five letter words, GOPED, RODEP, stuff like that. You can often make an acronym out of it too. My business, for example, was a similar five letter word with no meaning - but I made a meaning up for it which looks to most people like the meaning came before the word. RODEP is good, try and Google that, you get nothing. If you had rodep.com.au and so on you would clean up for people searching for your site.

I'd spell it raves.

my initials are SMH, what are the chances of me getting SMH.com.au ??

Yeah pinky that's what we're talking about

say the company name is flash ... flash.com.au is taken by some sitter company... and flash is copyrighted AND trademarked AND she has the ABN attache to flash

surely she would have a case to claim flash.com.au as her own right?

no
because you can register "flash sucks pty ltd" and still register "flash.com.au"
as long as it contains a significant part of the business name, she's up s*** creek

if "flash" is a trademark word in australia then you can move to assert your trademark, icann will back this up, so the local nic also will. As will any judge

i'm lucky cause we have a bunch of company trademark lawyers who just enforce trademark, so if i see a brand being squatted i can sic the dogs on to them, so far i have only been involved in a few court actions to retrieve domains, most people just give it up

we had a funny exchange the other day when we found someone with a trademarked domain with no content.. we told them they were infringing trademark, however they thought that since there was no site content they wernt infringing.. the fact that they just have the domain is an infringment, making it point to no where can often be worse then pointing it to a fan site or similar, since its considered to be damaging the brand, when you point out that they could be liable for damages on a brand which is worth a cpl of billion or more they quickly give up.

moral of the story is its called a TRADE MARK for a reason, if you have a business name or product you should always trademark it, and you should trademark it in any country that you do business in.

and i use dnsstuff.com for my whois, they always scrape the local nic

Well the domain I've been waiting on got deleted some time before I checked it last night and now. It's already been snapped up by a company called "domain camping", their domain just redirects to the dotster partners program. and they've put some f***ing ads on there.
What a joke. f*** the internet in it's f***ing arse.

What's the domain name?

Can't say, it would reveal too much about me.


How can I dispute this bulls***?

last edited by thermite at 20:06:36 30/Jul/10

haha learn to domain.. look at whois and you can see when the domain is about to lapse, there is a snap tool you can use which will attempt to acquire the domain the sec it becomes available, it costs a bit but is worth it :) i have used it on a few domains with good success

http://www.melbourneit.com.au/policies/index
page 5

DRP
http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2008-01/