It's your domain, or so you say. One morning, you wake up to find that it's registered in someone else's name.

Can you prove it's yours? Can you get it back?

The sex.com story

One morning, Gary Kremen woke up to find that the domain name sex.com, which he'd registered in 1994, had changed hands and was registered to ex-convict Stephen Michael Cohen. In 1995, Cohen had allegedly written a fake letter with a forged signature to Network Solutions, the registrar. He stated in that letter that control of sex.com was to be turned over to him.

In 2000, the court found the letter to be fraudulent and ruled that sex.com was to be returned to Kremen. Cohen was ordered to pay $65 million in punitive damages and for lost revenue. He never paid it, however, fleeing the US instead.

The story continued with charges against Network Solutions for mismanagement of sex.com. A lower court ruled in 2000 that Network Solutions was not accountable for its negligence in handling the domain. A domain name was not tangible property, according to the judge. In 2003, the US Appeals Court ruled that Kremen did have property rights to the domain. The following year, Kremen reached a settlement with VeriSign, the owner of Network Solutions. While the amount was undisclosed, it was rumored to be over $15 million.

Domains and ICANN

It's doubtful that any other domain has the value of sex.com. Our domains are valuable to us, though, and we want them to be protected. If they are stolen, we don't want to spend years fighting to get them back.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was created in 1998 to help manage domain names, among other responsibilities. At the ICANN website, we read that ICANN "