Startup Sues a Domain Name Owner to Grab a 16-Year-Old URL

Or that an Internet native should not do this.

Now if you're going to tell me that Harsh Meta isn't the best computer-game supervillian name ever, I don't know what is.

What's particularly sad to see is that in the process of publishing the court filings, they've also very obviously published the defendants home address too (whois not withstanding).

On 25 June, he told Kneen that "it was an internal mixup and the error has been corrected" -- a day after the civil suit was filed (cf. screenshot of tweet in article).

To me -- and possibly to a judge -- that shows "bad faith".

A dismissal of the suit, initiated by the Plaintiff, would be in the best interest of both parties, in my opinion.

It is trivial anyway to "use" a domain name. Are you further suggesting that someone who is legitimately "using" a domain name (and who is going to decide what use is anyway) then can't sell that domain name? And does that mean they can't sell the business that is attached to that domain name? Or you are going to have some tribunal that looks into the facts of every single case and decides 'ok this is a "real" business the domain can be sold, "no this isn't sorry"'?

Let's say a name that you would one day sell for $15k was registered by a flower shop that used it for business. In that case if someone else came along and wanted that name they would very well have to pay more than 15k for it and might not be able to purchase it at all.

Let's look at some of the comments:

- Finally, I don't think this owner, nor Justintv.com, are cybersquatters since they owned their domains since the 90's.

- I agree with you, but in this case the original owner wasn't a squatter.

- note that I don't like squatters either, but who can tell that he wasn't legitimate when he registered it first?

- Not to mention that he registered it in the 90's! How does that possibly count as squatting?

Nope.. not really seeing any "nasty comments"

And there are "punishments" to prevent someone from sitting on a domain that they have no intent to use. We can assume that Kneen has paid about $160 in domain renewal fees.

However, I do like your idea of preventing "doing nothing". Just as ICAHN requires up to date information, maybe they should require that you direct it to a host that is to do something other than to sell the domain after X years.

I would like to buy a cottage on the lakeshore, but the owner (who doesn't use it) won't sell it to me at the price I would like to pay. Perhaps I should sue him?

I have seen some many startups using .co, .io, and even an early stage using a .technology. I actually saw Harris Teeter, The Grocery Store, opening a new location in Northern Va and advertising that it was hiring with giant banner that said "harristeeter.jobs".

.com is here to stay, but there is still room for more top-TLDs

In the mean time, I've been contacted about selling the domain twice. Both times, the persons who contacted me, have failed to follow through on the purchase. I continue to renew the domain name in the hopes that someday, I'll get to the actual project, or perhaps my kids will.

Having said that, there are lots of things that would benefit society as a whole if we aren't using them, cars, houses, money, etc. I would argue that a domain name may, in some miniscule way, benefit society as a whole, but let's not kid ourselves, there are far more important things to accomplish than suing someone over a domain name he bought 16 years ago.

Otherwise we will begin to go in your refrigerator and take the food that is certain to end in the garbage, go in your closet and take the clothes you haven't worn in x years, give you your money back for the vacation home you bought and visit only 7 days out of the year and remains locked the rest of the time.

I suspect he did "nothing" (our term) with them by simply getting mere email via that domain, or running a background service, or even just musing in the back of his mind about building a business for which workbetter.com would be a good domain.

But let's just say Mehta starts his "coworking" space. Then perhaps society later deems it good to have a program that takes the underemployed and increases their skill levels. Or encourage those whose jobs have been replaced by robots to find more spiritually fulfilling and socially valuable volenteer jobs in the community. Then we can take the worksbetter.com name away from the useless coworking space and redirect it to a socially more beneficial use!

Look, I hate squatters, but Keen seems hardly even close to being one of them. What he is is someone who shows that the cost of getting rid of squatters is higher than the burden of having those parasites around.

A startup tried to buy a domain and failed. So instead of moving on, they decided to sue. Sounds like a winning plan to me.

That is irrelevant, though. We know they didn't come to an agreement, yet Office Space (that's their name, really) pursued the domain transfer anyway. That is fraudulent in my book.

Just because you happen to wish the world and the law worked differently doesn't make the article biased.