I think you missed my point, Iām saying anyone in the chain (e.g. Opensea), who charge some fee when transferring or selling a name we own the rights to may be targetable by all parties who own such IP. Even if it never goes to court, itās enough of a headache to potentially harm ENS on such platforms. Itās happened to us personally as a business; someone got a couple of hundred grand for a video we ripped but made no money on (as it had low views) because they were able to argue larger implications to our actions - itās a thing.
If your company ends up trying to sue ENS I hope the owner of mynewssite.eth rears their head and joins the battle because I would be eager to help pay for potential legal fees for ENS by donating to mynewssite.eth
But in all seriousness, you will spend more money and time attempting to sue decentralized entity than you would by just putting a bid on the name, bidding costs you nothing. Calculate the amount of money spent on resources you would use in court and how much it would cost if you lost, and just bid that on the name with that budget.
Like other users have mentioned, you face potential unintended consequences on the PR side by suing a grassroots nonprofit DAO over an ENS name some teenage kid may own.
Technically, the name didnāt exist at all until it was minted. ENS didnāt knowingly sell that specific name.
ENS contract is a tool that users can interact with to mint domain names.
Imagine a machine that prints names on a shirt. The shirt is the ethereum network, the machine is the ENS contract. The names donāt exist yet until an anonymous user decides to make use of the machine. If the user decides to type in nike.eth and have the machine print that on the shirt, who are you going to sue and how and why? Ethereum network? ENS? The user?
The treasury funds canāt just be moved out to pay your company bc a judge ordered it (if you figured out how to win in court), itās a multisig wallet and the project is decentralized. You would have to win over the majority of people here, the delegates, and the devs. Suing wonāt get your company anywhere with this.
I think this is a very good discussion about the value of āthe brandā. I would argue the squatters also actually bring the value, and therefore deserve part of the pie. Letās dig into this a little deeper.
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First, the squatter might NOT be a squatter. The squatter might just come up with creative names, which accidentally collide with the existing brands. This might NOT be your case.
In the traditional world, this āsmart squatterā might just lose the right to own this name. But this new world favors this squatter, which seems reasonable.
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Then, letās say the squatter is taking advantage of the brand. This means the squatter values the ENS project, and the squatter is also an early practitioner.
āThe brandā is nothing physical, it has value because it brings value to the company. It does so, by influencing, networking, etcā¦
The squatter values the ENS project (I donāt think its reasonable to assume the squatter just squats everything). The idea āvalues the projectā itself has value, just like influencing brings value. Then, if your company would benefit from ENS, the squatter does somehow have made contributions.
I understand, I really would like to see your company have that name. I think the person who owns it would probably take far less than what they have it listed for. You can even contact them through their wallet address on blockscan or reach out to them in other ways to communicate with them directly.
You should communicate with the owner of the domain name. Having negotiated thousands of cases, I can tell you that opening a dialogue with the decision-maker is always the best course of action.
Either way @ARL I would like to complement you on being very smart and witty , and congratulate on quickly becoming a star of this community
I sincerely hope that your company will get that name without considerable hassle and looking forward to see what you guys will be building with this name
This is an important point but the harm could rear its head if the domain is sold and the buyer uses it in a way to tarnish mynewssite in the future. In the future lawsuit, mynewssite will name the owner of the domain name as primary defendant for IP theft and trademark infringement, and True Names Ltd. (ENS Core team) & OpenSea as co-defendants for abetment in the aforementioned crimes assuming that mynewssite has the resources for such a suit. Itās not unimaginable. This is a very nuanced conversation and people are not taking it seriously enough I fear.
You might solve this one particular case, or the next one, or the next one, until one comes where the owner doesnāt relent (or worse, is unreachable) and the claimant is too big to back down. We have ourselves a good case study here, once everyone.eth is willing to look past their ego.eth
The idea as proposed - giving .com name owners first-right-of-refusal for ENS names, even existing ones that need renewal - is completely unviable, as it would make .eth effectively useless and make name registration near impossible.
Iām closing this thread as itās devolved into off-topic discussions about legal matters.
, and congratulate on quickly becoming a star of this community 
