Sorry your browser is not supported!

I'm hoping some of you may have experience on domain registration.

Ok, so me and some other members of this web site's forums, got fed up with the staff's mess. They played favoritism and treated us bad, so a bunch of us left and started our own site/forums. Well it has been doing pretty good for only having been up a little over 2 months. We just went about our business and and posted on our forum, but the other site started giving us trouble, spreading rumors about us, and even some of their staff members joined ours and tried to start mess.

We managed to take care of it though and our forums are still up and running and doing good.

Sorry for the story on to the question.

So anyway I registered .com, .org, and .net of my site.
after our competition pulled their little stunts, I registered .org, and .net of their site name and forwarded it to my website >

I checked and found out that their .com is set to expire nov 22 and i want to put it on backorder and hoping that i will get to get it before they renew it and forward that to my site to and finally take them down. I know its a long shot, but they are pretty careless so you never know.

They still don't know I have their .org or .net

My question is, would it be legal if I did that?

Nothing would make me more happy than to for them to type in their site address and see my site come up. One of their staff members now is an admin on my forum and said that we have a good chance to make this happen.

I was told its perfectly legal to register the name before they do if its available and forward it to my site but I want to make sure.

Thanks

Gowmars

Yes it's perfectly legal. It used to be legal for you to obtain any domain name, regardless of trademark, but nowadays you don't want to attempt to get ibm.net, microsoft.dk, etc. as they can and will sue you (and you'll lose).

If those jerks don't have a registered trademark on their domain name, you can rightfully obtain it. I'm doing that same thing right now, using GoDaddy.com's backorder service.

Of course, IANAL and all that jazz--- ask Phillip hehehe.

Yeah, it's legal, however, with most registrars, such as GoDaddy, they will hold the domain for you for about a month after its registration runs out (so you have a chance to re-register) by them simply buying the domain automatically and then selling it back to you.

If they know anything about registering domains, they would have set up some system like this already

Thanks guys!

I currently get my domains from godaddy. I'm gonna go ahead and get a back order to their .com

Wish me luck!

Edit: sorry one more question. I don't belive they are trademarked I never once saw a (t) by their name. But does anyone happen to know if there is a place I can look to see if they are trademarked or not?

Since you know it's legal now, just remember it may not be wise to mention your game plan (if you didn't already) on your forums. There could be a rouge member hiding and watching.

Indeed! As of now its just between me and my other admin.

I'd say that is a distinct possibility.

well what happened is way before we formed our own site, he got fired and banned from their site. Then when we started our own site he was very helpful when we started it and set it up. I'm 100% convinced he’s on our side, if anything its helping him get back at them.

and he was fired for a dumb reason just like how the rest of use got treated bad for no reason.

Its because of him that we have kept peace with the other forum for so long and was able to combat them when they tried to start mess with us.

if only you guys knew what they did.

edit: oh i get it. I didnt specify in my first post that he is no longer a staff member of theirs.

Update:

Well, after two months of having .net and .org of their site linked to mine they finally discovered it. Of course not happy.

So first they posted a huge notice in red at the top of their page saying not to go to the .net and .org cause it does not link to them.

That I don’t mind, people’s curiosity will cause them to it and it will get my site publicity. One of their admin though, did break an agreement we had. After the last problem we had with them, they are known for going off and Pm’ing our members and complaining to them when they have a problem instead of coming to the staff to settle it. After we took care of the last problem we agreed that any problems that occurred would be taken care of only between us admin. But their staff went off and started complaining to our members again. Although I found out just recently that the admin didn’t approve of this, but then again I have yet to talk to him.

So basically I have a few choices, I can keep the addresses forwarded to my site
I could forward it to their site but still keep it registered to me so I have control
I could give/sell it to them.
I could also just make a completely different page that has nothing to do with either of our forums and forward it to that.

But ultimately I do want to keep the .net and .org addresses registered to me.

I have two main staff members who work under me the only two I trust and talk to about stuff. One hates their site worst than me and wants nothing more than to bring them down. The other is nice and does his best to keep peace. They both advise me I get options from both sides. One tells me to keep it as it is, the other says I should give it to them, but they both agrees the decision is ultimately mine and they will back me up no matter what I do.

But my main thing is to avoid any drama on my site, that will be the first and foremost thing I must consider and not let my personal feelings get in the way.