Anyone who's bickering about $150 vs $250 to acquire a domain is not a "big corporation". The OP is being bluffed.
(Not linking here in an attempt to preserve privacy.)
If that case is indeed the right one, the complainants have had a trademark on their mark since 1953, and yet they let the domain be first registered in 2005, and then bought by the current owner in 2011.
So, they could either have created the domain before 2005 or buy it between 2005 and 2011, but they chose to go against the current owner in June of this year only.
There should be laws against such carelessness.
Why would a serious law department make an offer that domain squatters regularly turn down when selling obscure domains to nobodies like me? I tried to buy prgmr.net and prgrmr.com (note the extra 'r') from the squatters that had them; I offered $300 a pop, but they wouldn't budge from three grand. (they can keep 'em if they think they can get three grand of value out of them. What do the economists say? the highest value use? They aren't worth two new servers to me, that's for sure.)
It sounded like a grand or two would have made the guy happy, and it sounds like the company in question has already sunk several times that into legal fees. Are serious companies really that irrational?
UDRP specifically refers to "out of pocket costs" so offering a small amount of money allows the complainant to not exceed that without jeopardizing and potentially enhancing (by baiting the owner) any future legal actions.
One reason is to send a message of fear to the registrant that the company that wants the name is unreasonable and crazy and will take all actions at any cost to get the name.
Same strategy in personal injury cases. Some companies will settle for any reasonable amount because the legal cost is high. Others would rather send a message by spending three times the money on legal costs.
(2) why the Respondent (domain-name holder) should be considered as having no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name(s) that is/are the subject of the complaint; and
(3) why the domain name(s) should be considered as having been registered and being used in bad faith
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The issue is registered AND being used. It would be pretty hard to argue that it was registered in bad faith when it is his name. Of course, ask the Nissan guy about this, there are exceptions.
The problem, as explained to me by a lawyer (I am not a lawyer, so don't go taking this as legal advice, as I'm paraphrasing what I was told), is that legal departments for really big corporations just care about winning. It doesn't really matter whether they are in the right or not. What's going to make it difficult for you is that they have a huge amount of resources that you don't.
It sounds in your case like they have no actual case for cybersquatting or similar. But that doesn't mean they won't sue you. And if you can't afford to be sued, then that's an automatic win for them.
You also need to evaluate what level of stress and trouble you're prepared to go to to protect the domain. It may suck, but there will be a point at which it would be better for your sanity and your health to let them have the domain and get as much as you can out of them for it.
If I were in your shoes (and I was) I would first visit a lawyer. Get some proper advice.
it was awesome. Is that why the site died?
Details: I own the .co.uk version, but not the .com. My dad has had a company registered (not in the US) with the name in it. The cybersquatter seems to have squatted a bunch of dutch last names and isn't associated with the name at all.
If you express interest in a domain name, the squatter knows they should renew it forever because at some point when your company makes more money or whatever you'll buy them out for the asking price or something pretty close to it. If you don't express interest and no one else does either, and traffic is minimal, the squatter will drop the domain as unprofitable (no money from the ads on the parking page, no interested buyers = unprofitable domain).
The problem is the they want like a dollar per month to give you one email address. I'm well aware that is not much but it's annoying that they claim to do this to "share the wealth" of that domain name with everyone with that name. The problem is they are taking money for email addresses and you can't use the domain name (or even a subdomain) for anything.
I'm more interested in having the domain for my family, I would have no problem giving subdomains and email addresses to anyone with my name contacting me.
At least according to Norwegian law (which is probably similar to International domain laws?) you do not really have a case unless you can prove you have the rights to own that domain. And since you do not really require anything but a name to own a .com you will probably have a hard time doing so :-/
The problem is the they want like a dollar per month to give you one email address. "
That's a perfectly reasonably business model. Renting email addresses is quite clearly "using" a domain. It might not be a hackernews/startup-web-business, but they've thought of a way to try and make a living and registered the domain first - what makes you think you have any sort of claim to "have rights to own taht domain" than they do?
I would guess that nissan motors didnt actually want to shell out 1M to buy the name. They probably offered a paltry sum, which Uzi rejected, and then tried pulling a digital version of Eminent Domain. If everyone knew how long and how expensive the proposition would be, I'm sure Nissan Motors would have preferred to just have paid a million for the domain
Otherwise, I wish him luck.
Put yourself in the OP's shoes. You're a college student and you get a notice like this handed to you. It's not like you have an IP lawyer on retainer or cash to run out and hire one instantly.
In fact, one helpful redditor pointed out that his college might have a law school that would be willing to help with his case as a teaching exercise. I bet the OP knew nothing about that, and that's worth the price of visiting reddit alone.
The best advice in that thread was to seek out on-campus legal aid. At the law school I went to, there were clinics that dealt specifically with entrepreneurship and IP. Look around, I'm sure other schools run similar clinics. You generally don't even need to attend these schools to utilize their services.
At the very least, if you can't find something like that, or the deal you're working on is a little above their pay grade, some professor on campus can point you to somebody that does good pro bono work or is willing to work on contingency.
If it just turns into a negotiation, you could do this yourself, but, honestly, you're probably going to get taken to the cleaners, both financially and emotionally, if you end up negotiating against professionals. Get a lawyer. There's no shame in it. http://www.ajkesslerblog.com/hired-guns/
I might also note that when hiring an attorney, you want to shop around, even if you're getting pro bono work. Check references and ask around (you can ask the lawyers you're interviewing about the other lawyers you've interviewed). Don't just settle on the first guy you come across that has a diploma hanging on his wall.
Currently there is nothing there, but I use it for email every day - it'd be a shame to lose the domain because it looks like I'm not using it to outsiders.
Something is a little fishy about this. It doesn't make sense that he won the UDRP without an attorney but hasn't been able to figure out an attorney that can give him free legal advice on these issues. (Ref: reddit comments) (See http://www.esqwire.com who gives free advice and has probably won the most cases). In order to respond to the UDRP he would have had to do some research and would have turned up the obvious suspects in this industry (Berryhill, Goldberger etc.)
While people have won UDRP's without a response (I've seen it happen) it is pretty rare.
