closed Please Appraise htvnews.com

[j8jweb]

Hi,

htvnews.com
htvnews.co.uk

HTV News covers about 30% of the UK and is one of the best-known regional news providers. If you view www.htvnews.com I have put their actual page inside the main part of the frameset. The domains expired yesterday, and have never been owned by HTV.

What do you think the domain would be worth to HTV?

 

[qak]

,

 

[alaneads]

no idea

 

[CoolHost.com]

Are you stating that there is an actual, established company named "HTV"?? This info may prove helpful for both appraisal determination and/or ... legal ramifications. Perhaps. Please give us some more info. Good Luck.

 

[DrWho]

"What do you think the domain would be worth to HTV?"

Perhaps a WIPO action against the new owner?

 

[j8jweb]

Yes,

The name of the company is HTV (www.htv.co.uk)
BUT the domains htvnews.com and htvnews.co.uk were owned by spanish popstar www.HTV.com prior to last week, so I can't foresee any TM action.

HTV News is a very well known phrase, and is on TV every day after the national news in my area. It covers about 30% of the UK. I think it's completely hilarious that they let the domains drop. Type in traffic is quite big.

Would it be worth using the domain for my own promotional purposes (I could do a hell of a lot with that name!), or simply try to sell them back to HTV?....I expect domains under these circumstances are difficult to price, but I wonder if any of you have been in similar situations.

Any feedback would be great!
Cheers,
James

 

[DomainPairs]

You're right in the area I've been exploring recently with my threads about MGMfilms.com.

HTV is a massive TV company and you can't run that link on your site. That's a really bad thing to do and you'll just get the name taken away from you. You need to be really careful and not show registration in bad faith.

I'd check the legal forum and take that page down asap. You should also look at sites like http://www.htvmagazine.com/
and http://www.htv.com.

 

[j8jweb]

I'd be very interested to hear more about your experience with MGM. My own experience with HTV has turned out to be strange. Even though they are a massive company, I called them to offer them the domains and they were downright rude to me! Sample conversation when I tried to call their web dept:

Me : "Would you be interested in the domain names htvnews.com and htvnews.co.uk?
HTV Guy: "Nope. Bye."
Me : "wait! Not even for FREE?!"
HTV Guy: "Ah, urm...well, if you don't want them...yes...I guess so. Maybe we could give you the reg fee? Do you think people type that in to the address bar then?"

DOH!

I tried to call their news dept after that, and the guy simply said: "This isn't the sort of thing I normally deal with. CAN'T YOU JUST PUT IT IN WRITING?" <click>

...and promptly hung up on me. This makes me think, all in all, HTV have pretty much given me permission to use those domains (i.e. 'well, if you don't want them...'). It's amazing how much of the UK is totally NOT clued-up webwise. I could really capitalise on this. Reminds me of the Clerical Medical websites I worked on - they were incompetent suckers too!

I'm slowly discovering that having an email address people are scared of is darn useful. I'm going to register HTVNEWS.COM with companies house. HTV can never touch me! Mwaahahahaha! Still, they deserve it. This is madness!

 

[DomainPairs]

You won't get the same reaction from their legal department.

MGMfilms.com is an example domain I am using, I do not own it and I hadn't even looked at the site to see who does own it. I just checked it and it flicks over to mgm.com which is what you would expect.

I'm waiting for the DNS pointers to resolve on a new site I'm setting up and I'll pm you the URL when it is viewable. Remember I am not a lawyer, and you would be better off asking this on the legal forum.