_for-sale DNS records
specification.website
specification.website
Around 1998 I registered a domain. Sony registered a trademark with the same name a few years after that. Someone on a Gmail account asked if he could buy it - I later found out he worked for Sony. I told him no - it's for a game I've been working on. I went on a vacation for a month and when I got back there was a fedex package filled with documents from Sony saying I'm violating their trademark and they'll take the domain.
I got a lawyer and he told me that I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. But he also told me that in order to fight the trademark it would probably cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce...
In the end I ended up selling it to Sony but through my lawyer - I never stated it was for sale. But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.
It was a very good name and I think I had a solid case for keeping it, but I was not prepared to fight for it.
Anyway, you got $2k. That's way better than paying for lawyers and losing it anyway, isn't it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comput...
Trademarks are interesting. They don't need to be registered in order to be protected (although they can be registered), and they aren't usually absolute (even if they are registered).
So, like: There's a bunch of different entities named "First Federal Bank" in the US, and that can be OK as long as they each operate in their own distinct areas. It definitely becomes problematic when the First Federal Bank that normally operates in/around Tuscaloosa tries to open a branch across the street from the First Federal Bank that is centered on Littlefield, Texas, but outside of conflict: It can be fine.
A common name can also sometimes be used in distinctly-different lines of business or products. That's OK, too. Like Dove (the soap), and Dove (the candy bar). They're both trademarks -- they're even both registered. But they're distinct-enough products that it works: It's difficult to confuse a Dove candy bar with a Dove soap bar.
And there's also the concept of well-known marks, like: Everyone knows what a Pepsi is. There's no chance that Pepsi would avoid seeking action against anyone else using that name for any purpose, and because Pepsi is so well-known there's very close to zero chance that a court would tolerate it either.
A person can certainly start a company named Pepsi Shafting that makes drive shafts, but they won't be able to keep that name for very long. The cease-and-desist letter would appear approximately instantly and none of the threats it contained would be empty.
---
Anyway, back to my case: At the time when I registered the domain, I was operating a one-man hands-on services company and I wasn't selling anything tangible.
Meanwhile, the other party had a sleepy little business selling very specialized goods online. They weren't offering services at all. It was just a little post-bubble online shop like so many others.
I discovered them as I did my diligence before I registered the domain. I was aware that we weren't doing the same things at all. Like Dove and Dove, this was fine.
The other company subsequently branched out and got pretty darned big. I don't know if they ran into some VC money or what, but I'm completely confident that you've heard of them. Since you're on HN, there's a good chance you've even bought stuff from them at some point.
Hell, there's pretty profound chance that the founder will be reading this comment. :)
These days, it would probably be pass muster in court as a well-known brand, like Pepsi certainly is. But way back then (over 20 years ago now), it would not have.
So while I do have reasonable certainty that I could have kept my domain if I wanted to, it just wasn't worth that much to me. In fact, it turns out that was worth exactly $6,000.00 to me.
The nissan.com case is certainly compelling. It was included in my research.
It sure would be funny if my domain were added to the roster of similar incidents after a protracted court battle, but meh. I regret nothing, and I appreciate the excellent work that the new owner has been doing in advocating for consumer rights.
It's literally all good.
If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. I'm sure if you finished you game and offered it for sale on that domain, you'd be fine. You're actually using it and in a non-infringing way.
So yes, if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark, but alas...
>If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. [...]
>if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark [...]
I disagree, but they made a point and did so clearly.
Why that person felt someone else's chosen commercial use of a domain should trump anyone's non-commercial (or less commercial) use, I don't know.
All business assets are for sale at the right price, right? Even whilst living by the business at a particular domain, I'd have sold that domain for £200k, probably a lot less. Same as for any business asset, even (especially?) those in commercial use.
It's like concert tickets or any other limited resource that is transferable, "society" generally wants most people to have access to them but if they're too cheap then it's easy for one rich person to just buy them all.
Anyways, domain names are perhaps less limited these days (and google/claude kind of remove user's direct interaction anyways) if the usage of non-dotcoms are anything to go by. Also it's super hard to distinguish personal private use vs squatting.
UDRP:
https://www.icann.org/en/contracted-parties/consensus-polici...
Look for interesting sounding domain names that are owned but not being used by individuals.
Create a product with the same name.
Sue the person with the domain name and take it from them.
Win, because you're big.
Archive.org it to see little man beating big corporation
> In compliance with a ruling issued by the United States District Court in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002, in the lawsuit of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. v. Nissan Computer Corporation, this web site has been converted to non-commercial use.
And then this https://web.archive.org/web/20050701005403/http://www.nissan... says:
> Nissan Motor is suing Nissan Computer (named after its founder and current President, Mr. Uzi Nissan) for Trademark Infringement, Trademark Dilution and CyberSquatting, seeking 10 Million Dollars in damages
Besides this also indicate not so "little man".
Does publicly listing a domain for sale mean you'd automatically lose a UDRP arbitration if someone has a trademark for it?
No. A public sale listing is not an automatic loss. Here's how panels actually decide these cases.
The controlling rule
Bad faith based on a sale offer requires that the domain was registered primarily for the purpose of selling to the trademark owner (or a competitor) for more than out-of-pocket costs. Two things must be true at once: (1) the primary purpose of registration was to sell, and (2) the target was that specific trademark holder. A generic public listing on Sedo or Afternic doesn't automatically satisfy either requirement. (WIPO Overview 3.1; UDRP Perspectives 3.5)
What panels actually look at
No single factor decides it. Panels weigh all of these:
How distinctive is the trademark? A coined word like KODAK is treated very differently from a generic term like CLOUD.
Did the registrant plausibly know about the mark when registering? Famous marks raise this inference; obscure marks don't.
Was the offer directed at the trademark owner specifically, or listed publicly for any buyer?
Does the asking price only make sense if the trademark owner is the buyer, or is it consistent with general market prices?
Does the registrant hold a broader portfolio of generic/descriptive domains, or a collection of brand-matching ones?
Was the domain registered after the mark became well-known, or before?
Is there a credible non-trademark reason to want the domain?
Things that do NOT automatically mean bad faith
Listing a domain publicly for sale (UDRP Perspectives 3.5)
Asking a high price (UDRP Perspectives 3.5; WIPO Overview 3.1.1)
Even reaching out to the trademark owner directly — panels look at whether multiple parties were approached and whether the registration was brand-specific (UDRP Perspectives 3.5)
Wanting to profit — legitimate domain investing is a recognized lawful activity under UDRP (UDRP Perspectives 2.6)
When the calculus shifts against you
The harder cases are where the domain is identical to a highly distinctive coined brand, there's no plausible use for the domain other than trading on the trademark, and the asking price is only realistic for the trademark owner itself. In those cases panels have found bad faith even without a direct approach to the owner. A notable example is the three-member panel majority in WIPO case D2022-1570, which found that the asking price implied the complainant was the only conceivable buyer — though a dissent disagreed, illustrating that even these edge cases are not automatic.
Bottom line
The outcome depends on: how famous and distinctive the mark is, whether you had it in your sights at registration, whether there's a credible independent reason to want the domain, and who you're actually marketing it to. Generic terms with multiple plausible buyers, listed publicly, have repeatedly survived UDRP challenges. (UDRP Perspectives 3.5) Coined-brand matches with sky-high asking prices and no other credible use have not.
"The registrar must provide the full Registration Data to the UDRP provider within two business days after the registrar is notified that a UDRP complaint exists. The registrar must also lock the domain."
Not automatically, but you can attempt to get them back through the court.
You might be able to recover court costs via further legal action, but they tend to be minuscule in comparison to lawyer fees, and recovering them will cost you additional lawyers fees.
In the US, you normally don't recover costs even if you win; sometimes you can get an exception, especially if your opponent behaved in a particularly egregious manner.
In most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the normal rule is the loser pays a significant percentage of the winner's costs. I know here in Australia, the default is the loser pays (on average) 50–75% of the winner's costs ("standard costs")–the variation is because the judge sends the case to an auditor who reviews the winner's legal bill against the rule book, and so the exact percentage depends on factors like which tasks the winner's lawyer charged them for, their hourly rate, what the auditor viewed as reasonable given the complexity of the case, etc. Convince the judge the loser behaved egregiously, and then you get indemnity costs, which are closer to 85-100%.
This has pros and cons. For the "little guy", it makes lawsuits much more survivable if you are confident you are going to win; it makes you much more inclined to just fold if you think there is a significant risk you'll lose.
1. First don't really care, since they get the money from their client
2. Think you will give in if they write a threatening letter.
I am not a lawyer but most lawyers have had a bad experience with me. (I have worked in regulatory and have written patents that were granted. So I am not a total NOOB). Many communications ended with "we don't want to pursue this further..."
My understanding is that trademarks are about the term being recognised "in common", while a ® is once you pay money to your govt's department for the fancy paper. Hence, if you registered <cool name>.com and sold said cool named game, you already have a trademark simply because you're the author. (Of course, money for lawyers and proving things in court isn't free, but you have legal grounds to stand on nonetheless.)
[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5526903/domain-name-val...
The best example is changing the g in github.com to u.
That results in uithub.com making the data there LLM friendly. Is that considered infringement?
Sony have always been Disney-esque in their legal aggression. They don't care if they're right, they have teams of lawyers and they're quite happy to sic them on any tiny thing because they know you can't fight back even if you wanted to.
Actually, it gets better: He originally submitted the website to HN himself[0], and his post was flagged/removed, likely due to being AI generated and indistinguishable from a lot of the AI spam that clogs up /newest.
Which naturally makes me an authority on the matter. I may have been in middle school but i guess sheer years of involvement are all that counts, right?
EDIT: more to the point, briefly.
Whatever his past successes (or failures), this is decidedly a website which tries to pass itself off as something it is not. If you want to collate information to have a centralized guide, you can do that, just don't name it deceptively.
A specification is a very concrete thing, including in the world of web standards, and someone who's been involved with Wordpress of all things for over two decades should know better than to try and launder the term.
His contributions to Wordpress do not inspire confidence. While WP SEO was no doubt popular (the numbers seem to back it up), SEO had always been a very handwavy thing, and the industry was always full of people willing to profit off that.
To be clear, while I am not accusing de Valk of being such a profiteer, I am staunchly of the opinion that success in the SEO space is not a strong predictor of that person's expertise in any other area of web technology.
To wit, on his past: he appears, per Wikipedia, to have been involved with a site at css3.info. A skim of his author page (/author/admin/) shows that this site had a similar goal, if narrower scope, to the site linked in the HN post we're currently discussing. It was a bad idea then, and it was a bad idea now, and I write this with the knowledge that at least one other contributor to css3[dot]info claims to have been a member of the W3C's CSS3 WG.
And finally, on his Wikipedia page: this is an... unusual page.
- While there's strong off-wiki evidence that he has a presence outside of Wordpress (notably, as a VC), his wiki page focuses almost exclusively on his SEO plugin and the company he built around it.
- By biographical article standards, the article is strange. It focuses much more on a single product than the life of the person being documented, and the vast majority of the article is unequivocally positive. Neither of these are outright indicators of any malfeasance, but are both unusual.
- The principal source for information outside of his career is a Business Insider interview with him which is, again, outstandingly flattering (though nominally informative). The article in effect follows his own description of his life without framing it as such. This is, at a minimum, sloppy writing for Wikipedia.
My overall impression of him, having myself hosted and developed a handful of WP sites in the technology's heyday in the late 2000s/early 2010s: this guy is a marketer with an above-average-for-marketers technology background. I maintain that his website (both website[dot]specification and, to a lesser extent, css3[dot]info) are both at a minimum deeply misguided in their naming and description. My personal take is that, in `specification`'s case, this is a marketing attempt (effectively, an SEO hijacking attempt); it looks legitimate and approachable to web developers relying heavily on agents (and so too does it seem legitimate to agents), and frankly organizations like the W3C just don't have the same kind of presence as they did when HTML5 and CSS3 were new and very, very hot, so newer developers may not know to look for the W3C's drafts.
> SEO
For me, these terms are synonymous.
That way, squatters are incentived to sell it to someone who's going to use it.
That way you would be forced to keep it personal.. or suffer reduced sale price, as the new owner would need to backpay the minimums you were exempt from, or take on some risk merely leasing from you until the lock eventually expires - as you remain the true owner and all the payments and paperwork must cross your desk.
Ironically, this approach would give power to an entity that decides who is relevant and who becomes a citizen, which is the government.
Since most domains that are for sale don't currently have such a record, it would be wrong to assume they are not for sale. Therefore, absence of such a record does not explicitly mean "not for sale." It's no different from a house: a "for sale" sign in the front yard means it's for sale, but lack of a sign doesn't mean it's not for sale; it could mean the owner doesn't wish to advertise that way, or at all.
I have a domain name with the TLD of "today". Many people think my email is [email]@[domain].today.com. It's not just the common person's fault but also software engineers / product managers who still have a very restrictive view of what a TLD is (under 3 three letters is the primary restriction I hit).
Since I don't believe we'll ever convince people that domains longer than 3 letters / full words are TLDs, I think the solution is every human being gets 10 domain names at marketprice then every domain ownership above that gets graduated ownership costs; the first year is market, second year is $100, third year is $500, fourth year is $1,000, and so on until the 10th year where it levels out at $10k per year.
The idea of it being if you want to hold onto a lot of domains you need to pay for it or make the domains economically viable. With what is essentially infinite space, we shouldn't be allowing domains to be like finite real world real estate to be speculated on.
Domain names are still a finite space, given that a full domain name can be at most 253 characters, and each domain label at most 63 characters. “Requiring” a .com/.org/.net/.CC at the end isn’t really that much of a restriction.
By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available.
> By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available.
Hmmm! I may have to grab this one. The one I really want is madeline.com (it's owned by the family who made Madeline the book) but I am doubtful I will ever get that one without loads of money or ever, hah.
I am hesitant to say the domain because of spammers but it is the [shortened version of that name].today.
I’m more annoyed by products/companies choosing names that are just common words.
I'd argue that they're not freeform now. You need to pay ICANN something like 250k USD to consider your application for a new TLD, plus I think you need to convince them that you actually can operate the infrastructure required to reliably serve queries and subdomain registrations for that TLD.
I do agree that we have _way_ more TLDs now than the five or ten we had back in the 1990s, but the barrier to creating a new one is so large that I'd not describe them as "freeform".
I don't like the pollution of the global namespace. If someone thinks, there should be a domain named today, fine, but don't put it in the global namespace by creating a new TLD. DNS is a hierarchical structure, there is no reason domains should all be only 4 segments long. Arguable 'com.' should have really been 'com.us.', but that's history.
So more similar names unsorted in random locations in the tree. Aka. more pollution. We seem to have a different idea of the concept of pollution.
1. People who can't understand how tld works, learn it. Changing the world to accomodate ignorance is not my preferred direction.
2. We don't link the concept of domain names to economically viable for an US citizen, since that is not a fair for probably a few billion other people.
I think this solves none of the current problems with domain names, but at least it does not add any new ones.
Skill Issue
In my opinion domain squatting should be banned instead.
I agree it's a problem when I want a domain and it looks unused to me. I don't think it's really squatting.
I think it's also a jerk move to control resources just to extract w/o developing those resources. But that also happens with real-property.
All that to say: "squatting" on a domain is a "hard problem".
You also mandate KYC on everything. No more WHOIS privacy - if you have a domain name, the whole internet knows your home address.
When searching their online whois[1], they'll tell you if a domain is for sale and link to the for sale page. They don't use any of the info you put in the DNS though. The URL comes from their internal system. You need to register it separately. They also don't use the price, txt or anything else you put in the DNS.
All they use is the "fcod", to look up the url in their own system. They had a different syntax for this before, but this functionality has existed for some years.
I appreciate the interesting discussion!
If you’d like to get a better understanding of the concept, have a look here: https://rfc10023.nl
The biggest use case today, at SIDN (the registry for the .nl ccTLD), is described here: https://github.com/SIDN/ForSale-RFC10023/blob/main/examples/...
Has everybody forgotten about well-known email alias addresses? Inquiries about the hostname itself would be (among other things) exactly what `hostmaster@domain` was intended as a point-of-contact for. No need for a working WHOIS service, let alone a non-privacy-redacted WHOIS record.
Also, for domains that are just "parked", not in current use, obviously the parking page can just have a for-sale banner. This is exceedingly common.
> Enquiries that would have been welcome never arrive, and the ones that do arrive are indistinguishable from spam.
Laughable misrepresentation.
I just gave my domains a _for-sale record. I asked AI for what they should cost and put that value and for domains I don't want to sell I added a 0 at the end.
Twitter owned both the domain and all trademarks so it’s a non issue.
Basically in fairly limited circumstances you can have your domain taken off you if someone else holds a matching trademark. Saying you are selling it can go some way to demonstrating you are not holding it in good faith.
I now get what you're saying, but then this can be turned against everyday people. Imagine you have a domain that is your personal blog, vacation photos, stuff like that. No ads, nothing to sell there. Then you receive a message "We from Microsoft/Sony/IBM/Amazon are willing to give you 10Mil for this domain, because we have plans for it, if you won't use it for something bigger ofc" And then show your reply in court saying "He want to sell it". Even if you run a successful business, they can troll you and say "We offer 1bil - you and your family will not have to work for the rest of your life", and then say "His business is fake, he is selling the domain". I don't know if this is possible but if it is, then the whole system is wrong I guess.
In "Common mistakes" this article first says not to add this record if you're not actually planning to sell the domain, then says that the record doesn't oblige anyone to do anything, that feels quite weird to me.
I have a particularly valuable domain name that would be perfect for a museum that later opened with the same name.
I'd love to sell or even give it to the museum, but all my offers have been ignored. I don't blame them, since everything on the Internet is a scam these days.
But I won't just put it for sale to the highest bidder. Then it'll end up with a squatter. I'd rather sit on it.
TLDs like .online actually have a registrar-based dynamic pricing system based on internal rules, like domain size, presence in word lists, plurality, etc... And their distribution of available to taken names is quite good. It's different, which is already good, no one needs yet another TLD with the uncreative allocation system of copying the .com, we need variety, and I feel a binding DNS based offer system might make for a aftermarket-based continuation of the successful .online experiment.
But if the offer is not binding, then it's just an advertisement, no consideration, no contract, unlikely to amount to anything materially different than a 'domain for sale' HTML pages. In fact, if the HTML page has a buy now button, it's effectively an offer that can be accepted just by clicking the buttons and inputting cc info, so it's even better than a non binding DNS record.
Also, let's stop using TXT for everyone, why is everyone such a pussy about actually using record types? Do we really need every tool to be compliant out of the box? What's wrong with forcing vendors that want to be compliant to actually write like 20 lines of code and formally implementing support for the feature?
We can do a lot better than using non-inclusive language like this. There are better ways to express the underlying concept.
- such a pussy about actually using record types
+ not bold enough to use actual record types
And I know it's not the core of the issue, but I meant "using TXT records for everything" not "for everyone".
Wonder how hard will it be in 20 years to get a good, unused name in a reasonable price.
But at some point we will also exhaust all nice TLDs too...
It will be even more difficult than it is now
What positive outcome comes from squatters sitting on unused domains?
Neither registrars nor tld operators care about squatting, even when they don't get a cut. Why would they? The squatter is paying them the same as you'd pay them.
Welcome to 2003.
There used to be a number of sites that would let users create {username}.some.subdomain.apex.tld. Perhaps this is not a thing any more I honestly don't know. If it is still a thing and someone registers the username "_for-sale" they could cause some confusion.
Why allow any level of DNS? If you are selling a domain that should include the entire domain and thus the _for-sale should only be valid at the apex unless the goal is to cause legal problems for some big providers.
I suppose the saving grace is that they can only create the _for-sale and not any of the attributes specific to the intent to sell and hopefully that is enough to prevent any shenanigans.
The game is to see who survives the longest without submitting to committing blunders that reveal an intrinsic incorrectible untrustworthy personality and low quality of work standards. And each month that goes by, more people around us are joining the game, some people fall through social pressure, and some feel more comfortable to display their antisocial/low quality traits as those around us do.
I personally feel comfortable holding on my anti AI purity comfortably even if 95% of people around me do it, I always suspected it anyways, let them keep on outing themsleves.
_for-sale baby-shoes never-usedRead our blog for the motivation behind it:
https://www.sidnlabs.nl/en/news-and-blogs/a-digital-for-sale...