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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

Apparently this happened in 1999 with Microsoft's Passport.com as well [1], and again later with hotmail.co.uk [2]. While I understand that snafus like this can happen, I don't understand why the new owner would simply hand back the domain for essentially no compensation (especially in the case of hotmail.co.uk - this appeared to be a clean transfer of an expired domain). If they let the domain expire, it's fair game and should go for market price.

[1] http://www.doublewide.net/

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=at_jl...

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If a company can reasonably show they own a trademark for a name in a region and should be awarded a domain, registrars will give away the domain. There has been plenty of cases where even old domains were taken away.

You are not awarded a domain name simply because you hold a trademark. There is evidence that domains have been awarded to trademark holders after a UDRP hearing and the trademark holder contested the validity of the registration. Read the UDRP guidelines [0].

There is also the counterpoint of the case of Nissan Motor Co vs. Nissan Computer Corp [1] where Nissan Motors owns the trademarks but have not been granted nissan.com.

[0] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en#4 [1] http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case292.cfm

> where Nissan Motors owns the trademarks but have not been granted nissan.com.

Just to clarify, Nissan Computers also holds trademarks but in a difference field of commerce.

Just like Volkswagen and Canon both hold trademarks on Eos.

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ICANN has policies in place to preempt ridiculous arguments like this.

Hotmail.co.uk currently has an expiry date of 23-Oct-2015, only three weeks away. I hope they don't forget to renew it this time...

Google.com should be fine until 2020, but I randomly looked up some of their ccTLDs and a lot of them are set to expire in less than a year. Google.co.uk has only four months left.

I wonder why large companies with deep pockets don't just register all of their domains for the maximum duration. There are a few ccTLDs that only allow 1-2 year renewals, but those are few and far between. Most domains can be renewed for 5-10 years at a time.

The oddity of the situation is that the longer you register a domain for, the more likely you are to forget about it's renewal..

However, most big companies use someone like Netnames, MarkMonitor, etc, who simply wouldn't let a domain drop, even if nobody asked them to renew it - instead they'll renew it themselves, keep it active, and simply add it to the next invoice.

Even so, it seems unnecessarily risky for MarkMonitor et al. to renew their customers' domains one year at a time, often at the last minute, instead of keeping a comfortable buffer of two or more years.

I don't understand why the new owner would simply hand back the domain for essentially no compensation

https://xkcd.com/1499/

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