HACKER Q&A
📣 throwaway_9120

What is that amount where a big company won’t bother to sue me?


So I was reading this thread https://twitter.com/cryptofelon/status/1548049090490953728?s=20&t=JuA1NrodiAOfZ67fFMfZhg

It is difficult to make out who is on the wrong side here but it set me wondering if I happen to possess some domain and a big company comes after me, what is that max amount where they won’t bother to sue me? (Perhaps the legal fee and associated headache is more than the amount they can simply pay up and both the parties move on.)

  👤 PaulHoule Accepted Answer ✓
It depends on their attitude. Trying to get your domain name is like a game of poker, it is a game of incomplete information, and it involves much risk. Consider this case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etoy#Toywar

where failed retailer Etoys.com tried to take etoy.com from people who had owned it and published for years -- right in time for the Christmas shopping season!!!

This was the beginning of the end for Etoys. Instead of being focused on execution, they were fighting a severe PR fiasco, getting bad press in The New York Times and Wired. Hackers crashed their server on the last shopping day, so they called the FBI and had the FBI pull the attacking server out of the rack.

Etoys abandoned their court case a few weeks later and they went bankrupt the next April.

If they want to fight like pitbulls then they will sue you but it is a very dangerous game. The best thing to do I think is to develop the domain so that is more clear you are not squatting.

👤 h2odragon
Big companies have legal departments (or law firms on retainer); who may well have people with time on their hands who need to find something productive looking to do. You might become someone's makework project.