That is a very expensive oversight if they did not already negotiate.

I would not be surprised, however, if they already have an agreement (and kept it in his name until after the announcement, so that it would not be 'leaked' by the whois changing).

I have a bunch of experience in this area. Domains are almost always acquired by a brand protection company like MarkMonitor or CSC. The domain is then transferred to the brand company or a shell company they own.

A few years ago I sold a domain to a major video game company. They created an entirely new Delaware LLC to receive the name and hide the fact that it was an upcoming franchise.

See also Nissan.com

This is interesting. At first I was on the side of Nissan Computer Corp., but on thinking about it: it's only because of Google that I know Nissan.com is not the motor company. This must have been a major pain for Nissan motors before Google. Nissan.com probably has many, many more hits due to visitors trying to find Nissan Motors. In such cases, I think we need to have a means to acknowledge that there is probably a stronger argument in favor of Nissan motors owning the domain.

> more hits due to visitors trying to find Nissan Motors. In such cases, I think we need to have a means to acknowledge that there is probably a stronger argument in favor of Nissan motors owning the domain.

In no way do we need to acknowledge that. If strangers show up at my house looking for you every hour, that doesn't mean that you should "probably" own my house.

If Nissan wanted the domain, they should have offered a fair price rather than trying to take it via a unfounded lawsuit.

I agree. I think the large number of people going to nissan.com expecting to find Nissan Motors just serves as evidence that Nissan Motors should consider buying the domain (assuming that Nissan gets sufficient benefit by having those visitors go directly to their site when they type out nissan.com)

At least Nissan had their name prior to the domain being taken (they just didn't register it early enough.)

When I first read this I was thinking that this might be an Alphabet-type situation where the domain name doesn't really matter but I'm not getting that impression now.