Is there legislation to protect domain names?

Have controls been put in place to protect companies from their domain name being hi-jacked? For example - we are being pressurised to buy the .co.uk version of our company name as "another company has requested it" and basically they are giving us first refusal. It smells to me. I've refused their kind offer but would like to confirm that we are protected.

Is this any use?

my2leftfeet said:

we are being pressurised to buy the .co.uk version of our company name as "another company has requested it"

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If you're an Irish based company doing business in Ireland, I wouldn't be bothered about this. Default websites that people in Ireland would go to anyway would be .com and .ie. Using a .co.uk domain when looking for an Irish company wouldn't be all that common.

Plus, presuming that there is a UK company with a similar name to yours, your branding, product offering and distinguishing features separate from the website distinguish you from this company anyway.

Finally, if your search keywords on your website are sufficiently well thought out, you'll get people who want your site to your site via an internet search anyway.

I seem to remember many years ago a battle between Microsoft and Morgan Stanley in America over the ownership of www.ms.com. Both claimed rights, but Morgan Stanley had it registered first. Morgan Stanley doesn't even use this as it's primary website address now, and I don't think Microsoft would care now either. It's about the identity rather than the address.

This is a marketing trick ( not scam) thats practiced all the time. Companies selling this imply your domain is in danger and you register a .uk domain even you probably dont need one at all! Even if you do, they usually charge about twice what it would cost you to do it yourself directly.

Who is offering to sell you the domain name? Is it registered already by someone else?