[sbarre]

There is a process you can go through with ICANN and WIPO if you feel that you both (a) have a legitimate claim to the domain name and (b) the current owner does not have a legitimate claim. If the panel sides with you, then the domain will be transferred to you.

Note that (b) is - intentionally - quite difficult to prove, and is designed to prevent overtly bad-faith cyber-squatting without allowing "he who came late to the game but has more money wins" type of reverse-hijacking.

Since "petal" is a common word that you chose to use, but did not invent or have worldwide common recognition with, you very likely won't have much of a chance of using the dispute resolution process to obtain petal.com.

Interesting article about the early days of domain ownership disputes here:

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/communications_lawye...