Internet domain names
Your internet domain name is a vital part of your business. We can help you select and purchase an appropriate name, advise you on any problems relating to it and ensure its timely renewal (if you fail to renew in time you risk losing the name).
When buying or selling a business please do not forget the importance of transferring ownership of the domain name - and that it is a business asset with a financial value.
If you are registering a new business name don't do so without consulting us on the suitability of the name for Internet purposes and register the domain name at the same time as the company name to prevent someone else spotting the new company name and grabbing the domain name first. The same applies to company mergers, as soon as speculation as to the possibility of a merger speculators start thinking of possible names for the merged organisation and buying the name.
What is a domain name worth?
The value of a name depends on how anxious a buyer is to obtain it and the depth of their pockets. The record price paid was for sex.com which sold for US$12M
Who owns a domain name?
Strictly speaking you only ever lease the name, if you don't pay the renewal fees you lose the name.
Effective ownership of the name is the named registrant. You MUST ensure that is either your company or yourself. You can use an internet "Whois" service to check registrant details.
Some schemes offer "free domain names" often as part of a web-hosting package - these are sometimes registered to the hosting company, and they may prove unhelpful should you wish to move elsewhere. Similarly some web designers register their clients domains to themselves.
Someone else has bought the domain name I want, what should I do?
If they have bought it speculatively and its fairly specific they'll probably sell it, the "going rate" in that case is US$1000-1500
If it's a widely applicable name the price can get far higher.
If they are using it for a commercial web-site (not just a listings site intended to earn revenue from the advertising links) it gets more complicated. If their business is successful the price will be very high. Look at it this way: Suppose a website is generating £1000 profit a year. How much would you need to invest in a savings account to generate that amount of interest? Typically 20 times as much. You could then regard the value of that domain name as £20,000.
Things only start to go in your favour if the current owner is effectively trading on your name, perhaps using your established trading name or trade mark in their domain name. In that case:
- Send a "cease and desist" letter.
- If they offer to sell at reasonable price, say a few hundred pounds, negotiate and accept.
- If they stop using it but don't offer to sell you could offer to buy.
- Use the internet dispute resolution processes (there are costs but only in hundreds of US$).
- If they continue to use the name in breach of your trademark, legal action is possible - but very costly for both parties. Better to try negotiation first.
Should I consider alternatives to .co.uk and .com
Broadly speaking , No.
.co.uk and .com are widely recognised, if you had, say example.net many people would remember it incorrectly and type example.com and perhaps reach a competitor's website.
There are exceptions but please speak to us so that you can make an informed decision.
Can I buy domain name that would be of value to a competitor
Suppose your competitor owns your-competitors-name.com and not your-competitors-name.co.uk and neither does anyone else, what's to stop you buying it?
The legal position seems to be that whilst there may be no constraint on you buying it, there will be constraints on how you use it. If you simply direct traffic to your own web site you can expect to hear from their lawyers. If the link was to a web site about something totally unrelated to your competitor's line of business then they would have a more difficult task to demonstrate that there was any intent to pass off the second site as representing them in some way.
Putting business ethics aside, buying such a name and linking it to a simple "name for sale" page may not give much scope for a legal challenge but going one step further and directly soliciting a sale to the competitor is more problematic. In any case some companies are very aggressive in defence of name variants. Using the words Virgin or Easy anywhere in a domain name is likely to attract the interest of lawyers representing Virgin group or Easyjet.
Even sound-alike names can cause problems. For an interesting example, search Google for the story of Mike Rowe, a software developer who had some problems when he registered "MikeRoweSoft.com".