Legal Question in Business Law in New York

How to proceed

Hello,

My cousin and I started a business together, we hired a third party company to create our website for us as the business is an online clothing store. The company charged us $5000 to put together the site in a package deal whereby they would register our site for us and put together the site...we paid them half of the monies upfront and were to pay them the remaining balance at the end of the project. It's been more than 5 months and the site has not been completed to our satisfaction so I was trying to get the company to bring it up to standard before I paid them the balance. After a few attempts the company still has not been able to do the job based on the examples that i gave them so i started looking for someone who would be able to update the site after they completed the site. The name of my business is boutiquemasala, the person who I chose to updated the site for me let me know that after looking at the whois record on the netsol website it shows that the company hired to building my website registered my domain name under the name of their business so they basically own the domain name. Could you please advise me as to how to get it back from them as i hired them to do the job for me. Than you so much


Asked on 9/04/07, 1:44 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys
Kaiser Wahab Wahab & Medenica LLC

Re: How to proceed

Firstly, you should review the actual contract you have between you and your designers for termination clauses, milestone provisions, and any detail about how they were supposed to register your domain name (e.g., in your business name at the outset, or a transfer of the domain name upon full payment.) Assuming the contract is either in your favor or sufficiently vague, you should then consider sending a letter indicating that they are in breach of their contractual obligations to you (and if possible that their registration of your domain in their name is a material breach/TM infringement, etc.)

You also have the parallel or alternative approach of using a Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) proceeding to reacquire the domain rights. However, this is a more expensive approach and should likely only be considered if an attorney letter fails to produce results. For more information about a UDRP proceeding you can read here: http://www.wrlawfirm.com/Articles/wrm.article.UniformDisputeResolutionPolicy.html

If you would like to schedule a consultation, please feel free to contact our offices.

Best,

Kaiser

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Answered on 9/04/07, 2:04 pm
Nancy Delain Delain Law Office, PLLC

Re: How to proceed

I presume you have a written contract with the website developer? Have your attorney go over the contract with you with an eye toward suing them under the contract. If you don't have a lawyer, you should hire one to help you with this.

THE INFORMATION PRESENTED HERE IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND IS NOT INTENDED, NOR SHOULD IT BE CONSTRUED, AS LEGAL ADVICE. THIS POSTING DOES NOT CREATE ANY ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US. FOR SPECIFIC ADVICE ABOUT YOUR PARTICULAR SITUATION, CONSULT YOUR ATTORNEY.

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Answered on 9/11/07, 2:28 pm


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