Someones nicking company for subdomain.. legal?

[adiwillow]

Hi all... great forums i apoligies as this has also been posted in a general worldwide forum.. but i though it was more relevant here as this is purely a UK forum !

I wonder if anyone can shed any light...
A website i did a long time ago has a domain such as the following..

bondy-reclaimed.co.uk (This is an example). The company name is also bondy reclaimed.

Now, a rival reclaimed company has bought the domain .reclaimed.co.uk some time ago. What they're doing is creating subdomains with all rival companies before the .reclaimed bit. So, in my case our site is bondy-reclaimed.co.uk , and the rival site is at bondy.reclaimed.co.uk , obviously a copy of their main site. Now, this domain is obviously VERY similar to our own, with VERY similar products.

Now, i know anyone can register subdomains how they want, but given that the site is selling similar products, AND the fact that they are clearly specifically targeting my sites customers.. can anything be done to ask them to remove the subdomain?

this is the first time i've encountered this.. so are a bit new to it. The company is also doing it for many other reclaimed companies.

Thanks
adi

 

[temi]

Adi,
The first thing you should do is send them a polite telling them to remove the sub domains for the reasons you gave above. If they still do not remove it, you should report them Nominet UK (They will probably not do anything) and also report them to Google for spamming (this will have serious effect on their search engine ranking, they may even be banned by Google for spamming.

 

[adiwillow]

thanks temi.. much appreciated.

 

[PrivateInvestigator]

that's a very new problem.

officially nothing wrong witht hem doing that. keywords in domain names must be exactly as registered in order to be owned. but this could also be thought of as impersonation and there are laws against that.

unless you're willing to put them through the courts at expense to you, witht he possibility of them winning just forget about it.

 

[temi]

I will not forget about it PI. Perhaps you are righ from the legal view point but if you report them to Google for spamming (which is what they are doing) their domain will be blackisted so even if they create a thousand sub domain of other people's business it will not be recognised in search engines, that is actually the best punishment for them

 

[adiwillow]

i definitely wont forget about it .. as temi mentioned earlier an email sent to them asking the domain to be removed is going to follow. Then a follow up citing legal action, although this is unlikely to happen of course (although i have today contacted two companies to see what could be done if need be). Google reporting is also another strong possibility.

This is a small reclaimed building supplies company, specifically targeting other reclaimed building companies web domains for obvious reasons. I'll follow it up and let everyone know the outcome.

Thanks
adi

 

[adiwillow]

I emailed them and asked them to be removed..

He got back to me saying he had emailed his web designer for advice, and he got back to him with a whois of my domain for some reason, stating that 'the domains you listed are not even registered'?? whatever thats meant to mean

I wrote a lengthy email back explaining what was going on in clear terms, and advised him that these practices could get him blacklisted from search engines if reported, and that there is also a possible legal implication.
Again, i insisted on the subdomains being removed. That was thursday night and no reply as yet and the subdomains are still there.

I've noticed that this company/web designer has also done the same for every other reclaimed company he could find in the UK. There are numerous subdomains active that all consist of the competitors names and do the same thing.

I'm trying to avoid getting too deep, but i'm not going to give up until he's removed them. I personally think he's mad if he doesnt agree to get rid, for the sake of a few extra visits per month.My next step is to give him a deadline , after which i'll be submitting spam reports and contacting the other reclaimed building companies and asking them to do the same.

anyone got any advice?

 

[temi]

It appears that its the web designer who is doing this stuff rather than the company you contacted, do you have contact information of the web designer? Its him you should give the deadline to.

 

[adiwillow]

not as yet.. might not be a bad idea though.

 

[inactive_jumpenjuhosaphat]

Another thing that I'd be doing is contacting all of the other companies that are being mocked and informing them of this misconduct. You should forward an email to each of them that is an exact copy of the emails that you sent to the company. Then you should resend them to the culprit, explaining that you have sent them to all effected companies. If enough people get pissed enough and email the culprit, then maybe he'll smarten up. If not, do as Temi said, and get all of the effected companies to do the same, create a complaint with the search engines.