This is such an interesting area and at the same time very confusing for all involved. In fact, it is a regular source of hours of debate amongst us guys at Xebidy, no less so the other night at 11 pm after a BBQ and far too many beers at my house.

Mat Weir our lead developer is our guru on expired domains. He buys them with some regularity to use to promote a number of sites he personally develops and promotes. He recently acquired www.queenstowntaxis.co.nz, a fantastic domain with lots of links, to promote his www.experiencequeenstown.com website, after the domain had expired of course – the problem is that Queenstown Taxis is still heavily in use by the previous owner – on their business cards, or their vehicles, everywhere. And they want it back.

Now, my understanding is Mat has done nothing wrong, he has not purchased the domain name to resell back to them nor has he purchased the domain name to trade on their business name or confuse the market, in fact, he has purchased the domain name to promote his business legitimately.

This is quite different to the well-quoted Qantas situation in Australia in which when domains were first really becoming important a couple of guys purchased the www.qanatas.com and tried to sell it back to Qantas at an extortionate rate. In this case a court ruled that they had to give it to Qantas for the same $50 they had paid for it. The ruling was that they had purchased the domain name with knowledge that the name belonged to someone else and that they were therefore attempting to profit on someone elses fortune illegitimately.

I have also seen another recent case in Australia where a large Australian touring company let one of their domains expire and a small operator in the same area purchased the domain and built a site on it. The court in this case also ruled that the domain had to be returned because both companies were operating in the same area and therefore the second company that now was using the domain was confusing the market.

I don’t know what is fair and what is not. Firstly, when a domain expires it sits in a type of state of limbo for about 3 months to give the original owner a chance to renew. So it is not a case of it expiring and then the next day someone else owning it. Secondly, when a domain expires it is available to everyone, surely it is open market. I agree with the Qantas situation where these guys had no other intention but to profit off Qantas. But what about the tour company story? They clearly did not have an intention to profit off the other tour company (I don’t know how public this whole scenario was so I don’t want to be going around saying company names at this time) simply they intended to promote their own business with a domain that was good and because of its’ history and links had good Google rankings. Is there anything wrong with this? And what about Mat, he has purchased a domain to promote his own information website in a completely different market. He has pointed the domain to his page about Queenstown taxis – this is fair is it not.

The one thing I do know is make sure you have got your domain management in order. If your domains are looked after by your web master or similar make sure they know what their doing and that they have in place the processes to know what is happening with your domains at any point in time. If it is managed in house make sure that person is onto it. And, finally until it is clear keep your eyes peeled for good domains that you might be able to acquire to promote your business.

Share this Post