I just noticed, thanks to my crack net admin Ken, that http://www.battellemedia.net/ (I’m not going to link to it and give it juice) is being parked, skinned, and used to make money. Yuck. Help – what do you all suggest I do about it? I must have forgotten to renew it, or perhaps I never bought it. Ick.
Ewwww. That’s Slimey.
I just noticed, thanks to my crack net admin Ken, that http://www.battellemedia.net/ (I'm not going to link to it and give it juice) is being parked, skinned, and used to make money. Yuck. Help – what do you all suggest I do about it? I must have forgotten to…
it looks illegal by GoDaddy. How much do they want to sell it to you for?
Uh, isn’t this piracy. They are making money. They are not just pretending to be you. They are pretending to be you to make money.
How about a classic cease-and-desist letter from your attorney?
And, how about taking them to court on trademark infringement and force them to settle by relinquishing the domain to you?
Looks a bit like a legal slam-dunk to me.
It’s not godaddy thats at fault AFAIK. Its some dude, likely a squatter, who owns it and is just using godaddy’s referal-driven park service. They pay in free domains last I checked.
Maybe you could ask @godaddy what’s up? ;P
Sorry about that, chief!
;D nmw
Since they’re including this site in an iframe, you can probably look for them as a referrer and serve them a special page created just for them, instead of the actual site.
John,
Send over a Cease and Desist letter to GoDaddy. They are the host of that web site.
The owner is some guy in Brooklyn. He registered it in April of 2007.
Doesn’t look like you ever owned it.
battellemedia.org looks to be pending delete and will expire soon.
Thanks you too much John.
John,
Let me know if I can help. With a pending delete you can often use auction services to buy the domain. The key is offering more than they would make from a renewal. Most parking domains average less than $10-20 a month. You can offer up an anonymous bid for the site through services such as bulkregister and at least have a chance of grabbing it back.
This is all about what makes the most money for the person who squatted the site name. Typically a cease and desist will only work if you either owned it originally, or it’s a trademarked or copyrighted name.
Personal names tend to be a free-for-all.
I’d also buy up the rest of the variants you might want. It’s cheap per year.
Do you have “Battelle Media” Copyrighted? Tradmarked? Registered?
If the answer is yes you can contact Godaddy admins directly and get your name.
If you haven’t you should and ask the attorney you file with how to get the name back if at all.
feel free to ask me on twitter if you want @steveplunkett .
simply put, if you haven’t bought the rights to the name “Battelle Media” yet, then get an atty and do so, ASAP.
Key may be to have “BattelleMedia” trademarked as single word.
In fact, I’ll bet my house on it! (I’m no gambler but since well into negative equity it’s a very safe “can’t lose” bet.)
Since it’s a frame, you can check the referrer and serve something more interesting.
In this article, you can link with a nofollow attribute and not give the site juice.
Hire an attorney. File a UDRP dispute.
Now you know why I’ve been kicking myself for naming my site The Mommy Blog seven years ago. WHO KNEW? Now every other blog is called The Mommy Blog. How do you protect a brand that is pretty much the Kleenex of the blogosphere?
Here is some advice – tend to your business and don’t complain. Or sue – like NBC sued Veoh for usurping it’s content during navigation to earn revenue. Wait a minute – isn’t that search?
I friend of mine has a company which specifically works on helping people handle the sort of issues (he is a friend, but I can say he does amazing work). If you want to check them out their address is: http://aliasencore.com/
@Mindy I didn’t realize you could trademark motherhood!
;D nmw
Did you trademark “Battelle Media”? If so, you should have your lawyer send a cease and desist to this person, emphasizing that they are violating your trademark. If they don’t stop, you should bring action against them.
If you did not trademark Battelle Media you are somewhat weaker ground however, you still should have your lawyer send a cease and desist. If they don’t stop in this case, you and your attorney need to decide how to pursue.
You can use a chunk of JavaScript like this to redirect their page to your real site:
if (top.location.href != self.location.href)
top.location.href = self.location.href;