Can a domain be re-claimed if the owner loses it?

In IRC, if your 'Nick' expires then you lose it. If you had it for 10 years - tough - you lost it.

So, what if a major brand name forgets to renew it's domain? If I spot it and then register it - is it mine?

I've been stalking a few developer/publisher sites and wondering if you can steal a domain from under their nose - then sell the sucker back to them for a few thousand - or does the law take their side and take pity on them?

I'm currently observing a big-boy one that expires on 11/7.

You could probably get their domain name, but then they'd probably try to sue you for using their trademark.

Good luck with that plan... even if it expires then you probably won't get it. Might be possible if the name was just some small fry but domain registrars play all kinds of games with names including snagging good ones for themselves so they can sell them back to the previous owner for big cash.

Expiry doesn't mean it's available yet.
After the expiry date, it enters the Expired status. For up to 45 days, the services (DNS, email, etc) will no longer work. It could be re-registered again by the registrant.
Then, it enters a grace period for 30 days. This grace period is given by the registrar. The registrant can re-claim it for a bigger fee during this period.
After that, it enters the Deletion status. This lasts 5 days and the domain cannot be re-registered by anyone (including previous registrant).
Then, it is released and free for all follows. A lot of people are probably watching with services like GoDaddy, Snapnames.com, Enom.com, and Pool.com to try to snatch it before others, especially if its a big brand name.
Those services are more than often auction based.

In short: good luck.

The golden rule seems to be what applies in these cases.

What Gosse said.

As far as "is it mine?" depends: most of the time, yes. Since the owner obviously didn't use it actively enough to either not notice the 45+ day downtime or not care enough to renew it. However, if the domain name itself either is or contains a trademark, you can still run into problems registering it because the trademark owner will have a very good case contesting your ownership as a trademark violation, whether it was up for grabs or not.

Microsoft actually has a history of forgetting to renew their domains. Passport.com, Microsoft.com and Hotmail.co.uk have all been registered by others who then handed the domains back to Microsoft.

The sad thing is that when they forget to renew, and they're notified, M$ don't say 'thanks' and get in touch with the new owner to arrange transfer. Instead they release their army of lawyers, and publicly blame it on the 'cybersquatter' who picked up the domain, while privately getting on their hands and knees, begging for it's return.

Really sad!

Andy

Holding companies to ransom and trying to extort money from them sounds incredibly illegal.

Getting a domain is easy. Doing something with it is more difficult.

I also try creeping up on domains. I got this one registered 2 days ago www.dukehurtem.com

:)

Easy eh?
MYSPACEGIRLS.COM expired on July 2nd.
Try to snatch this one ;)
Auctions for it on GoDaddy are already at $178,000.

andy: Not entirely. Microsoft's domain haven't been registered by others, they merely had others pay the outstanding bill on their behalf. the individuals who did so never actually owned the domain, not even momentarily. IIRC, the passport.com was just paid for by someone annoyed that hotmail was down when he wanted to check his mail.

I read in a long-outdated book a long time ago that doing this is illegal, but as long as you set up a seemingly-decent attempt to make it look like your own, it's hard for them to punish you. If you simply have the domain, but don't do anything with it, they can say you're cybersquatting (is that the word?).

My advice: get a minimum-wage job. It'll pay off better.

>andy: Not entirely. Microsoft's domain haven't been
>registered by others, they merely had others pay the
>outstanding bill on their behalf.

Except the guy had a receipt of registration and the domain was only transfered back to Microsoft when HE contacted the press.

>the individuals who did so never actually owned the
>domain, not even momentarily.

Which domain are you refering to?

Andy

I just want the 90,000th post in this forum.

lies!

>I just want the 90,000th post in this forum.

Where do you see the amount of posts?

Andy

Andy Forum posts: 2971

>maximo<

GFK was refering to the whole forum.

Edit: Thank you!

Andy

It says that it's due to expire, but it'll most likely get auto-renewed. All mine say that but they automatically get renewed every year.

In other words, it's something you CAN'T steal this time.