In theory...

This has got me thinking, I might have completely the wrong end of the
stick but here goes.

Say I know of a company lets call them Company X.

Company X are a largish ISP.

Company X have a domain and that domain is also their portal.

Company X have forgotten to renew their domain name registration and
it expired some time ago.

Here's the crafty bit.

Is there anything to stop someone "maybe an individual" buying the
domain in the meantime and simply putting up a page saying,

"This domain is now owned by <enter name here>, if you would like to
purchase it will be this much £££££"

Is there a law against this sort of thing, would it work?

BTW: Company X really couldn't manage without the domain.

 

Fio was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

I don't think so, and no. Domain arbitration rules are heavily
weighted in favour of companies so they'll just grab it from you as
you're a 'cybersquatter' in their book and leave you with a largish
legal bill. If they're clever, as given this posting and the page
you mention above should make it very easy to prove that you're
registering the domain in "bad faith", and that's all the excuse they
need to get it taken away from you. Don't think they even have to
reimburse you for the registration cost.

OTOH I seem to remember that MS forgot to renew one of their domains,
one bloke registered it and then emailed them saying "you forgot to
renew your domain, I registered it so it dowsn't get grabbed by a
squatter, please advise how you would like to go about the
transfer". I don't think he got a lot of dosh out of it, maybe a free
copy of Windows and his name in a press release from MS.

 

<snip>

In theory, no, in practice you have no right to that name while they
do (being a company called "X" means they can have www.X.com ...

So all you will end up with is a big legal bill if you try and defend
it. Would google for the case history, but need to get to work ...

 

Heh, I remember that. It was for passport.com.

 

Yes. It's called the the ICANN domain arbitration system, and they'll
kick your butt.

 

Further to that, if it's a .co.uk then you wouldn't be able to register
it anyway - it takes nominet *years* to put expired .co.uk domains back
into the melting pot available to purchase.

If however it is available and you have legitimate use for it, then go
ahead and register it and start using it immediately. If company X want
it back, they'll either sue your arse as Darcy says above, or pay you
off. It's a gamble alright.

 

Using the patented Mavis Bacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Fio

My company got into a similar situation a while back. The outfit that
the blerk tried to use to register "our" domain simply contacted us and
said "You've forgotten to do this, someone's trying to nick it, do you
want it back?".