Real Estate Agents

[RustyK]

I see a lot of RE Agents using their own names for business and I was wondering with the tens of thousands of unreged names, is there any legal issues in reselling them. I mean there could be more than one person with the same name.

Any comment is appreciated.

 

[urlurl]

good question - i would like to know too

 

[ImageAuthors]

Technically, I believe this is banned by the Anticybersquatting and Consumer Protection Act. You can visit the wikipedia article using the link below. Just search for "personal names" and you will see that these are explicitly protected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act

Now, that said, you are more likely to get a cease and desist letter from somebody with lots of money and connections whose name is tantamount to a brand. For example, if you were trying to sell MichaelJordan{.com}, then I would expect trouble. Can you get away with this with us regular folks who don't have a legal team or an agent or a franchise built around our name? Quite possibly. Frankly, this ban on registering personal names for the purpose of resale strikes me as a bit ridiculous, given that most names are shared by many many individuals.

But don't shoot the messenger. I just link to wikipedia!

 

[Jeroen]

I see a lot of RE Agents using their own names for business and I was wondering with the tens of thousands of unreged names, is there any legal issues in reselling them. I mean there could be more than one person with the same name.

Any comment is appreciated.

Don't know about the legal aspects but I find the more generic names like JohnsRealty/Realestate/Property.com etc. difficult to sell and when they sell, usually for very low $xxx

 

[grcorp]

I have a feeling that you're referring to selling johndoe.com to a guy named John Doe.

Good theory, in that you have what they want, and therefore, they must pay.

Not such a good theory, in that...

- you could not prove "legitimate interest", nor disprove "bad faith" in a UDRP
- most realtors I've found hate the concept of paying for domain names at all. They go off on tangents about how it's a "reputation business", and that you can't buy a track record. I think they'd be just as offended at buying their own given name.

Have a look at what Hover.com does. They lease email addresses and subdomains of surname domains that they own. I'm sure you could develop a similar business model here.

What was immensely frustrating for me some time ago is that my name (Maxwell Arnold) is owned by Maxwell-Arnold Farms, in the .com.

In this case, I could never win against them. Because they clearly have a legitimate interest in it.