> No one other than lawyers or lawyer accessories is going to represent the company to the domain owner about it, though.

Of course. Here's the plausible chain of events:

1. Someone at the co. reads about this on HN 2. They tell their boss who might tell their boss, etc. 3. It finally gets to someone who is responsible for telling the lawyers. But they also say "hey this is kind of cool. We'll send a C&D, but maybe reach out to see if there's anything interesting there."

I guess it's not implausible somebody would try to open a nonadversarial conversation simultaneously with sending a C&D, but I will say I've never seen it done that way, and I suspect there's a good reason why not.

(Not least because escalating something to counsel, and then having side conversations about it with whoever you just brought to counsel's attention, is a bad idea!)

And that's if they see something here they might want to investigate further, which given SO's stance on ML-generated answers up to this point, I tend somewhat to doubt.

To be fair, I don't think the two things would happen concurrently.

I have, in fact, seen this exact scenario!

I don't think it's likely, but losing a domain is a small price to pay if that were potentially a goal.

Sure, it makes sense to start with the friendly conversation and escalate to a C&D if that proves to be needed.

Deliberately infringing someone's trademark with a domain name seems to me like a dicey way to look for attention, though. But hey, "it's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for 'em."

I hear that. But I don't think there was malice intended here. That won't stop a C&D, but it is more likely to keep the conversation open.