Once again we have got reports on a company who tries to force Norwegian companies to buy domain names. The service is said to be offered to protect a company name or brand.
The issue may be a proposal to register a domain name within other top level domains, such as .com or .as, or they suggest to register the domain name in different spellings, for instance with and without a hyphen. The company who offers services like this, often tells a story about other actors interested in buying the domain name, and that they need a quick decision.
Our advice is that a domain name holder himself must consider which and how many domain names his company needs, and takes his time to consider the matter. If a company should register domain names within a lot of top level domains in different ways of spelling, they will face a severe and expensive process.
– If the domain name in question is within .no, it might be a good idea to contact one of our registrars. They may give an advice on what to do, and not least; they can offer a domain name at a much lower price than this company does, Norid's Managing Director, Hilde Thunem says.