On Sat, Dec 27, 1997 at 03:49:29PM -0500, Bob Helfant wrote:
> The kind of practice described by Robert below does not really happen much
> if at all. The rightful owner of a domain name can usually get it simply
> by asking. No small time pirate is going to attempt to fight "Xerox" in
> court when they know they will lose.
I think you are overlooking something here:
Cost of xerox.firm: $100
Legal cost to xerox to go to court: $5000
I offer "xerox.firm" to xerox for $3000
They save $5000-$3000: $2000
I make $3000-$100: $2900
It's a no-lose proposition for me. All I need is a 10% chance that
the company will take my offer, and I'm in business.
Of course really large companies may have staff lawyers. Still,
legal action always costs money -- you just have to price your domain
name somewhat lower than the marginal difference. Small trademark
holders are quite vulnerable to this, however.
> The opposite, referred to as reverse
> piracy is much more common. This is when a large company who wants a
> domain name threatens a small company who owns it with extensive legal
> action. The small company may have the right to use the domain because
> they use the same word (such as "apple") which may be used by any number of
> companies in several industries. The small company cannot stand against a
> corporation in the courts (where most of these disputes will end up anyway).
My belief is that most cases like this seldom go to court because of
NSI's policy. However, good numbers on total incidence of domain
conflicts of all stripes are hard to come by.
-- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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