Registering adomain soon to expire.

[irish80ca]

Not sure where to look for this information but hope someone here can point me in the right direction.

If a Canadian company that's been in business for about 20 years and has had a domain name for about 5 of those years accidently lets their domain name expire is there anything illegal with mesnatching it up?

Is there anything I should do before purhasing it to cover my ass basically making sure it's legally mine?

[hugh_da_man]

I believe it's called domain sniping.

I think measures have been put in to allow for a 30 day lee-way for a company to re-register their domain to prevent snipers from extorting money.

The problem with sniping domains is that if you are one person without a very big bankroll and they sue you for the domain then you could possibly lose and have to give it back anyways. I'm pretty sure they've also implemented new rules to try to stop squatters from sitting on domains as well. Had you gotten "mcdonalds.com" you wouldn't be able to squat on it as you'd have no use for the name and thus mcdonalds would have the right to take it from you (and compensate you for your expenses). However if you owned McDonalds Trucking and that was your website address then they'd have no argument because you'd actually be using the domain and not squatting.

I hope this is all accurate and answers your questions. I did a bit of research on the same thing a while back while trying to secure some specific domain names for my company and came up with a bunch of these roadblocks.

EDIT: wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_sniping
Prior to the Redemption Grace Procedure (RGP) individuals could engage in domain sniping in order to extort money from the original registrant to buy the name back. The addition of RGP has largely abated the ability to 'snipe' names and therefore has moved the battle for expiring domain names to the domain registrar level, where companies such as GoDaddy or eNom retain names for auction through services such as TDNAM or Snapnames.

[teknoluv]

Not to be rude, but since you are asking HERE, you don't look like a professional. I would STRONGLY recommend you NOT to do it. REASON?

1. If you are trying to profit from traffic, the risk of being drawn into some civil lawsuit is not worth the minimal revenue;

2. If you are trying to blackmail that company into buying the domain off from you (a.k.a. cybersquatting), it's simply NOT the right thing to do, and most even half decent domain investors would stay away from that.

In short, forget it.