Frank wrote on Feb 26
th, 2016 at 12:28am:
I'm a bit surprised that didn't result in a lawsuit/out of court settlement, but maybe there are actual rules in place that prevent stupid people from screwing things up for an entire company.
After the first few cybersquatters court stuff, there's been rules put in place to avoid stupid shit.
It's not completely foolproof, but it weaned most of the cybersquatting issues.
Basically nowadays, you can apply for any domain... even one up for renewal... but if it's rightful owner ( the person that owned it previously in case of renewal, or a company with that name ) ask for it, you're fucked.
The loophole comes when you actually have a good reason to want that domain and somebody else has also good reasons for it.
Say you're called Alain Prost and want
www.prost.fr... and there's a moving company called Prost Moving ( whose CEO is Didier Prost... not related to Alain ) that owns the domain. Well Too bad, it's not because you're a F1 World Champion that the domain is going to be yours...
( this actually occured long ago, right after RIPE had put things in place... but before ICANN did, and RIPE said that since the Prost Moving Company was founded in the 70s and there's been no issue until the Internet Age, Prost Moving could keep the domain, as they had seniority over F1 World Champion. )