Shout out for advice

The wheel turns and now I am looking for people to share their experience and how they found a fix.

As most of our friends know, we moved on from the old Windsor Lodge in December 2015. New and wonderful doors were opened to us and, after 'paying-forward' for some 30 years, the unexpected rewards came flooding in.

In particular, the last ten years were hard slog and sacrifice that has now resulted in a great lifestyle, time with friends and offers to travel the world and stay with people we met over those years.

It doesn't come without a couple of hiccups and this is where our 'shout-out' comes in.

After having owned a web domain for some 10 years and nurturing it all that time, we let it go and lay dormant. The biggest mistake was actually not maintaining ownership and having it lapse. A clever chap in Sweden (maybe), has now re-birthed the domain and used content from the old site. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to annoy people. The guy who is the registered owner will not respond to any contacts so we are a little frustrated.

Just recently, the old Lodge and business was resurrected and the new operators have taken umbrage at the new website ( despite the fact they had the opportunity to nab the domain prior to it's re-birth). I do feel for them to a point but this is where due diligence comes in. The expectation that you would 'own' past hard work and development when only buying the Real Estate is non-existent. If purchasing the business, it would come with all the trimmings including a huge customer-base, intellectual property and possibly goodwill and blessings. In this case, not the case. All the trimmings would come about by negotiation at sale. If, in their hearts, they believe by buying the buildings from the owners they were entitled to everything then what happened to due diligence? We never passed on any permissions or entitlement to the business content.

This where we ask if anyone else has experienced a similar situation and found a way to pull down a website that was infringing upon your content. Of course we can engage costly 'experts' but they will most likely not find a way to sort it. We are happy to move on but the little niggle that is occurring with the presumption that we are responsible needs sorting. Most people out there place a huge value on their integrity foremost. From that comes the rewards from being in business for yourself and it must be protected. 

Let us know how you overcame that hurdle and continued with your success!