If you have been contacted by a party claiming rights to your domain name, and are being threatened with a UDRP, the worst thing to do is seek advice on general forums such as Reddit.
A “Redditor” shared his story there, about being contacted for a domain consisting of “two common words.”
I was contacted a week ago by an individual wanting to buy my domain name. I have had this domain name for 4 years and I was planning on developing it as a news site.
I did tell him that I would consider selling it. After looking up prices, I determined I would sell it if he offered 5,000 or more USD. After refusing his offer of $750 yesterday, I was contacted by a company based out London threatening to take my domain name.
Domain threats require legal representation. Photo by James Sutton on Unsplash.
Following this exchange, he received a threatening email – the Reddit poster has redacted most of the information related to the actual domain name:
Dear _____,
We are writing in connection with the domain name you own, ______.COM and your recent correspondence with “______@gmail.com”.
We act for _________ (see http://www._________.com/), and our Client has registrations for domains and trade marks containing __________ around the world. We are sure you have heard of us, hence why you registered this domain.
We have two choices from here: Option 1: we pay you US$500 and we get the domain, or Option 2: we pay you nothing, file a UDRP, and the domain gets transferred to us. Option 2 will cost us a little more money, but you get nothing.
It is up to you, let us know how you wish to proceed by close of business tomorrow. If we do not hear from you, we have instructions to proceed with the UDRP.
Kind regards,
I have taken out all personal information from the email to protect all parties from harassment. Any advice on how I should proceed next would be helpful. Thanks!
The responses by Reddit users vary, from ignoring the email to responding with a “Good luck with that.”
Only one response advises the user to seek legal representation.
It’s a bad idea to ignore a legal threat against a domain asset, and a capable IP attorney will be able to determine the validity of the claims, creating a strategy that might be able to deflect such threats.
To read the full exchange on Reddit, click here.
