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by mercurial 2968 days ago
Also known as "enabling domain name squatters".
2 comments

Perhaps so. But how would you have the issue resolved? Should the domain go to the most well known party? The product a reasonable person expects to find when they type in the address?

What happens if I register icar.com for product that syncs your car to the cloud. Then Apple decides they want to compete with Elon Musk, with their new Icar. Who will get the domain?

What happens when a large company decides to rebrand it's self and wants the domain?

What happens to Nissan? http://www.nissan.com

Going by iPad.com as an example, you'd play a game of chicken with Apple, because the moment you try to monetize that site in almost any way, they'll sue you for trademark infringement. You'll hope they offer you a ton of money for it, but Apple's brand is strong enough that they don't need it.

Mr. Nissan is lucky that he had an existing business that wasn't car related and he only registered his name...

Mr. Nissan is lucky indeed.

One of the reasons I used Apple is because it is easy to point to some examples of them acting in bad faith. Iphone and the music side both had legal niceties surrounding them, from all the parties involved.

If if was a small company or a single person in either of these cases, it would generally be a steam roll. Perhaps ipad.com is a squatter but I would want to make very sure before I give the rights to Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

Very dumb of Apple IMO. Just pay the guy. So what that he wants $x million?
Then they would also have to pay millions for applewatch.com macbook.com ipadpro.com macpro.com iphone7.com iphone8.com iphonex.com ...
>> applewatch.com, ipadpro.com macpro.com...iphone7.com iphone8.com iphonex.com

UDRP cost a few thousand dollars. iPad.com, IIRC, was registered before Apple came up with iPad. Plus, iPad is an entire product line.

If $x is more than $y they lose not owning the domain, it makes no business sense.
Wow. Nissan.com has a dropdown labled "people's opinions" with 505 pages. Thats.. one way to build a navigation.
the most charitable explanation might be that they can't afford good web design because all their money is funding their legal defense.
Ermm how exactly was an Internet company named Genesis Access Point domain-squatting a clothing company that didn’t even know what the internet was at the time they bought it? Did you think this one through?
In this particular instance, clearly not. However, a rule of "first come first served" does not do anything but validate domain name squatting as a business model. It's like patents, you may have a patent linked to a legitimate business, or you may be in the extortion business. Let's not enable extortionists.
Perhaps first practicing entity come, first served then? First with a legitimate interest in the name?

I'll grant that domain squatting is bad and not something we should want to enable, but it's also bad to automatically let the most powerful company win. If your name is Nissan and you own a computer store, you shouldn't have nissan.com taken from you because the car company is bigger. If your name is Mike Rowe and you thought to register mikerowesoft.com for your software projects, you're clever, and should get to keep your domain.