What about all places in the English-speaking world that have legal entities named TheBay ? It could be a restaurant, store, some Hong Kong hotel, escort service in the SF Bay Area LMFAO ?.... and many of them could have TheBay.com or in any gTLD or in their ccTLD. Is the eBay automated C&D system go to full gear since they'll read it as TheBay.com ? Up until now I thought a JD had to approve sending C&D's on behalf of a company, or at least a human, not an automated system. Or will C&D's keep being sent on behalf of (because of possible violation to) the DMCA ?
Then there'll be complaints to some guy owning HollandeBeers.com, Hollande being a French last name and the French word for Holland. Or AndeBeers.com because someone liked naming his microbrewery "Ande". This is insane, and it never ends. The possibilities with proper names and domaining intersecting are endless since there are so many languages. I once read the worst possible combination is that of big business and government (for ex the Obama administration is not pro-business LOL, quoting the biggest understatement there ever was) In this case DeBeers and eBay are shameful examples of corporations (DeBeers being HQ'd in Luxembourg) taking advantage of legislations enacted by governments
I had a similar situation to discobull's, almost identical in fact. Except mine was the reverse, we owned a four-letter acronym (semi-pronounceable but did not make any sense and we had never heard of that so-called "business" half way around the world, and they could hardly speak any English) and the initials of that overseas boiler room were three of our letters. I answered with the plain truth, how I had acquired it, it had absolutely no conflict, why I still owned it and why we hadn't developed which is the main argument against domainers. They did offer to buy it for like $10 just to insult me, when I refused they took us to WIPO. The name was not worth nearly as much as what we would've spent on lawyers or hours wasted researching domain law to even make an argument. WIPO gave them my domain, they plainly stole it with lies, but some honest domainers/defendants have won without even presenting a case to NAF or WIPO, all they needed was not luck but an intellectually honest panelist. At least they had to spend $1,500 for it, and I hope their mouthpiece passing for lawyer wasn't doing it for free. What kills domainers is that nowadays (especially in the US) anyone can sue you for anything, literally. And unless you have time and intellect to spend fighting it yourself, you're likely to spend a lot on legal fees when you've done nothing wrong, and for a domain that may be worth much less than those legal costs