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According to Wikipedia:

Domain name registrations may be successfully challenged if the holder cannot prove an outside relation justifying reservation of the name, to prevent "squatting".

Does this actually apply, and if so, how?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

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    Holder does not have a reason for reserving the domain? According to who? You? Can you make a case and present it?? They may have perfectly good reasons or no reason at all. It is anyone's right to register a domain and not use it for what you think they should use it for. You have no idea what anyone has in mind when they register a domain. I am not sure why you have linked the Wikipedia TLD list. What does this have to do with the question? Am I missing something??
    – closetnoc
    Jul 28, 2015 at 22:58
  • You're right. I was wondering what the wikipedia page meant by that.
    – sgoblin
    Jul 28, 2015 at 23:01
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    I hate squatters! I hate the whole domain monetization spam crowd! In some respect, I would like to see all those domain names freed up. But at what price? I have a domain name I did nothing with for many years and some that I mostly do not use anymore but they are my old company name. I hold on to them. One I use for e-mail. Another I use for research. A third I use to post photos of the historic area where I live. Who is to argue that my use or non-use is better than what they have in mind? It is not an argument that can be made. And I cannot argue that spammers cannot do what they do.
    – closetnoc
    Jul 29, 2015 at 0:19

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Yes, if you are a registered business, a trademark holder, or an owner of intellectual property, in the US under the Anti-Cybersquatting Piracy Act, you may bring the registrant for a website into litigation to have the domain name transferred to you.

Two such cases I know of:

A person registered sportys.com back in the day with the intent to hold it in ransom for a good price from Sporty's Pilot Shop. Sporty's sued for transfer of the registration as they had delayed creating a web presence due to the appropriation of their name.

The electronics supply website sparkfun.com faced getting a nasty note from Oracle Corporation requesting they surrender their domain name because it infringed upon Oracle/Sun Sparc registered trademark. Negotiations ensued and SparkFun now holds their domain name as licensed property from Oracle Corporation.

From personal experience, a company I know appropriated one such domain name (a full url spelling of their company name) used for fraudulent purposes and the surrender was quick and painless.

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    The domain name holder must be knowingly violating a trademark. But it goes a lot further than that. The use of the trademark as a domain name has to confuse the trademark. A trademark for Joe's Pizza in NY will not trample the trademark of Joe's Pizza in Pittsburgh. Trademarks are registered geographically. Cisco probably won only because the trademark name belonged to a global company and pre-dated the domain name registration. A compromise was probably required because the domain name owner did not knowingly register the domain name in violation of the trademark.
    – closetnoc
    Jul 29, 2015 at 0:53
  • it's actually about "good faith" rather than knowingly violating a trademark, anyone can claim they hadn't heard of the company before, squatters who bulk register many domains and don't upload content or barely use the site are not acting in "good faith", but the domain name challenger must have a very good reason like trademark violation to claim that domain. Wikipedia is not exactly accurate with anything slightly contentious or debatable. Always go elsewhere. The disputes and resolution policy is described in detail.
    – Mousey
    Jul 31, 2015 at 2:11

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