[Truth'sBabyGirl]

They might not get away with this. A company called Virtual Works purchased www.vw.net, and then when VolksWagen spoke up about it, Virtual Works tried to get them to pay a ton of money. It went to court, and the court found in favor of VolksWagen. There are lots of commonlaw doctrines about property rights, and the court found it would be inequitable to allow Virtual Works to do this.

Virtual Works, Inc. v. Volkswagen of America, Inc.
238 F.3d 264


A summary of the case appears here: http://www.phillipsnizer.com/library/cases/lib_case8.cfm .
I'd post a link to the full text of the opinion, but it's subscription-only. The summary linked above is pretty decent.

TBG

[miliantnutcase]

That's such BS. First come first serve. Although I think it's a pricky thing to do.

[econ_grad]

When Price Waterhouse and Cooper's & Lybrand's merged into PricewaterhouseCooper's, they wanted their website address to be pwc.com, which was at that time the website of Philadelphia Water Company. They paid a hefty fee to the water dept to get that domain name.

[connectthedots]

Here is a link to Virtual Works, Inc. v. Volkswagen of America, Inc. at findlaw.com

[numberonepal]

Didn't the VW case focus on trademarks?