Domain name ownership question

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vulcannz

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#243607 20-Dec-2018 12:39

I've got a sticky question.

About 5 years ago while working for a vendor (lets called them noisewindow...). I was setting up a personal lab (at home), and needed to do some testing with genuine certs and thus a genuine domain. I found that noisewindow.co.nz was not registered, so decided to grab it. At this time I notified the marketing team I was doing this and nobody was really interested.

One year ago I was made redundant as noisewindow shut down most of their APJ operations. So I decided to use noisewindow.co.nz more often doing some business of mine own (consulting). I have a proper website, email server, SPF records, DKIM setup, and DMARC even. All on both Ipv4 and Ipv6.

Today I got a call from someone at noisewindow in Aussie saying they are cleaning up all the global domains, and want me to hand over noisewindow.co.nz

I'm not adverse to giving it to them, however I will need to register a new domain, redo all my mail domains, websites, records, not to mention redo my mailserver (exchange). And of course let all my customers know my email has changed.

What are my rights here, they dropped a 'we'll go legal on you' hint. All I am really wanting is compensation for the above.

At the time of registration the company name was not trademarked, however I believe it is now.

freitasm

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#2148349 20-Dec-2018 13:01

In theory you own the domain registration. You don't have to hand it over. If you use it for proper business and they don't have a local presence, they have no rights. They might go through a complaints process with the DNC but that does not guarantee anything for them. If the first registration was before the trademark and if you are not in the same business then you should keep it.

On the other hand you bought the domain while an employee. Depending on your contract they could argue that anything you created while an employee belong to them.

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stinger

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#2148356 20-Dec-2018 13:17

> At the time of registration the company name was not trademarked, however I believe it is now.

If this is true (and the company wasn't registered as a company), they won't have a leg to stand on in the .nz (DNC) Domain Resolution Service. There are basically two tests to this (1) That the party raising the dispute had rights to that name at the time of registration and (2) it is not an unfair registration for the registrant. The full policy is at https://dnc.org.nz/resource-library/policies/65

However, as Mauricio pointed out, if you registered the domain name while an employee of the company, you might run into troubles anyway. My advise is make an offer, and see what you can get out of them. It costs $2000+GST and legal fees, so use that as a starting price point.

vulcannz

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#2148390 20-Dec-2018 14:11

Well it gets trickier, at the time they were owned by another company. That company subsequently sold them to raise cash for another IT company they were buying, so noisewindow ended up being standalone again and I ended up being an employee by proxy (hired by a 3rd party payroll company operating in NZ).

I saw the complaints process cost, I think I will go a bit higher, because the minute they pick up the phone to talk to a lawyer (we are talking US corporate lawyers) the $$$$ start ticking over.

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#2148466 20-Dec-2018 16:26

May be worth getting your own legal counsel just to be sure as this seems like something where the devil's in the details.

freitasm

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#2148471 20-Dec-2018 16:31

KiwiSurfer:

May be worth getting your own legal counsel just to be sure as this seems like something where the devil's in the details.

Agreed. If you were not been employed by them before I would just say "Nah, it's yours" but since you were an employee you might need some robust advice there.

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