Buying a Domain From a Cybersquatter

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 3, 2009 @11:57PM from the ask-nicely-but-bring-a-big-stick dept.

Nevo writes "A partner and I are in the planning stages of a business. We've decided on a name that we'd like to use but the domain name is already registered. The owner has a single 'search' page up (similar to the one at www.goggle.com)... clearly not a legitimate business interest, but since we don't own a trademark on this name it doesn't qualify as bad faith, I don't think. Does anyone have any experience buying domains from these operators? Do you have any advice on how to approach the owners of these domains to get them at a reasonable cost?"

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Don't play by their rules. by KyroTerra · 2009-06-04 00:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

My boss received an e-mail from a cybersquatter that sought to sell us a URL that was very similar to a URL we currently owned. My boss, being the URL hound he is asked me to purchase it. I offered the squatterâ(TM)s auto-bid website $50, which it automatically turned down and told me I had to offer a minimum of $500. I walked from the deal, only to receive an e-mail an hour later from the squatter, agreeing to my $50 bid.