If you have a legitimate interest in the name and the current owner has no defensible interest/use of the name, you can file an UDRP and generally get the name.
If somehow I was able to register "big_company.com", I'd be pretty much destined to lose it to a company with that name, unless _I_ also had that personal name or had made some use of the ___domain historically in a context predicated use of the name.
tldr - you cant really squat something unless it is generic
So if I owned example.org, but example.com is used by a squatter -- assuming example is a specific, trademarkable name -- are you saying I could get the .com via UDRP? Have there been cases where this worked?
I've tried the UDRP route. You have to have an extremely solid case to get the ___domain name. Furthermore, the ___domain name must be very very specific.
So if I've got a business called "Chris's Midwest TV Repair" and we've been in business for 25 years. If someone's squatting on chrissmidwesttvrepair.com then yeah, I can probably UDRP them. But I'm in the TV repair business, so I really need to spend my time finding something else to do before I'm buggy whipped, but that's a tangent.
If I'm just a startup trying to get a ___domain name, I have no case for a UDRP, nor should I.
"You have to have an extremely solid case to get the ___domain name."
Actually it's pretty well known within the business that the Plaintiffs win the majority of cases where the facts bear out their rights.
"So if I've got a business called "Chris's Midwest TV Repair" and we've been in business for 25 years. If someone's squatting on chrissmidwesttvrepair.com then yeah, I can probably UDRP them. But I'm in the TV repair business, so I really need to spend my time finding something else to do before I'm buggy whipped, but that's a tangent."
That's what its like to be a small business person.
"If I'm just a startup trying to get a ___domain name, I have no case for a UDRP"
You don't. A startup has no trademark rights in a ___domain until they establish trademark rights. The first step is to apply to the USPTO for a trademark.
If somehow I was able to register "big_company.com", I'd be pretty much destined to lose it to a company with that name, unless _I_ also had that personal name or had made some use of the ___domain historically in a context predicated use of the name.
tldr - you cant really squat something unless it is generic