If you are starting a new business, don’t let the cybersquatters in!

A friend and customer of mine recently started a new business venture and didn’t get round to registering the domain name for a few weeks.

She is launching the business in an area where there is already a competitor. When she came to register the domain this week for her business name, which is quite clearly for her business and no one else’s, she found that the domain had already been registered – in fact only a week or so earlier.

We used Nominet’s WHOIS service to look up the owner and found that it has been bought by the same person that owns the domain of her competitor; is this a coincidence I wonder?!

I read an interesting blog post about cybersquatting that gives some hope to her being able to make a claim for the domain through nominet (they call it an ‘Abusive Registration’) assuming she can’t buy it at a reasonable price from the current owner (unlikely I would suggest given the circumstances of the purchase!).

But, the learning point here is – as soon as you decide to start a business (and definitely before you tell anyone who may know anyone who knows your competitors!) register your domain name, before someone else does!

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