Need help with a potential case
So, me and a friend were creating a company. We ended up in a disagreement and I haven’t spoken with him ever since.
Before I stopped talking with him, I was helping them, and I had the business idea(I have proof I was the one who came up with the company name and branding).
After I left the company, I wanted to create a company myself, and when I searched up the domain, the domain had been bought.
I sent and message to this “friend” saying “Hey, have you bought the domain “…”? And he replied with yes, I sent a screenshot to him showing the domain was now evaluated at a much bigger price and he just laughed at me and said in a sarcastic way “Why? Do you want to buy it? lol”
The company is not registered on sunbiz, or USPTO yet. And he already launched a website.
I wanted to register the company at USPTO and create a Llc with the company name and file it in sunbiz.
Will I have the right to take the domain away from him if I do this?
Also, I have text messages and AI chat histories prooving I was the one who came up with the name.
If you are planning an adversarial move like this, you almost certainly need to speak to a qualified lawyer, not to casual law readers online. Nevertheless, the answer is somewhere between "probably not" and "unlikely".
You also might want to refresh on what the USPTO does, because they do not register companies; they register trademarks. And a trademark need not be the company name (although that certainly could be a trademark). And a crucial test for trademarks is that they are used in actual trade: not having a product is devastating for any trademark application.
And even if you did have a trademark, that does not entitle you to seize a domain name. Observe the 2007 purchase of iphone.com from an individual who had it since 1993, sold to then-Apple Computer. And Apple didn't even own the trademark to "iPhone"; they settled with Cisco earlier in 2007 which resulted in a license to use the trademark.
So even with a right to use the trademark, a prominent tech company in 2007 could not muscle their way to forcing the domain registrar to force a domain transfer. It would likely take a protracted legal effort to obtain such relief from a court.
TL;DR: you need to speak to a lawyer
P.S. for other people's benefit, SunBiz is apparently the name for the Florida Division of Corporations, which registers corporations within that US State.