common acronym question

[scrsteven]

Suppose you buy a 2 or 3 letter .com that is an acronym with hundreds of TM's reg'd for it. The old owner's whois had a bad e-mail listed. Within a few weeks of buying it, you get unsolicited emails from many multi-national corporations using those letters asking if it is for sale and a price.

Is there any way to communicate the idea that you would listen to offers, without getting in potential trouble? If one of them made an offer, could you counter it even? Say you aren't parking the name but have a small website based on a generic interpretation of the letters with some adsense ads, and that generic nature is what you bought the name to use it for (such as gum.com with information and links to buy gum; this is not the name).

I vaguely remember reading a udrp decision for a ll or lll relating to this topic in which the person lost the name because he said he'd consider selling it within 2 months after buying it himself, and that was supposedly evidence of bad faith or no legitimate use?... just looking for thoughts here.

 

[cyberlaw]

If you use the name for a non-infringing use, for example, maybe you use "IBM.com" as a site about "Interesting Basketball Moments," then your case is strengthened.

Anytime you "flip" a domain you're going to have to deal with the argument that you're a profiteer, and, as you mentioned, it can sometimes be effective.

LLL's are good, because there are a lot of ways to implement them.