www.thats-not-your-url.com

This is not legal advice, and I am not your lawyer, but you can't just sell the assets of a company and leave creditors in the lurch--that's smack in the crosshairs of a fraudulent conveyance issue. If it's structured as a sale out of an entity, the entity has the sale proceeds out of which to satisfy claims of creditors. Moreover, many creditors may have liens (materialmen's, mechanics', etc.) on the assets. You certainly can structure a purchase so that you don't assume DEBT (i.e., because the sale is net of debt, and sale proceeds go to satisfying indebtedness), but the law does not abandon the rights of creditors generally, unless in bankruptcy. Talk to a lawyer. Really. They owe you money; you likely have a right to it, regardless of who owns the company now. Holding their URL hostage is a really terrible idea. If you tried to sell me my company's IP back to me, I would make sure you are royally fucked, and I doubt you have leg to stand on. This has reputational dimensions as well--do you want to be they guy who forced Matthowie to buy back metafilter.com because he owed you a few hundred bucks? Ugh. That's bad news. Again, this is not legal advice, and I am not your lawyer. You need a lawyer, stat.

You say yourself it isn't worth anything outside of a niche that consists of Not Much. Just get yourself paid, transfer the domain and hosting back to them and fire them as a client. It may be a chunk of change but is this really how you want to be spending your energy? Put it into acquiring a less-stressful client. To this end I say flip the switch, fuck 'em. You have to speak to people in a language they understand and as you amply document you've tried the standard forms. You told them you were going to cut them off at the end of July, so just do what you said you were going to do.

Pursue the invoice with new owners. Tell them you will transfer domain name to them as soon as invoice up-to-date. Do not shake them down for anything for domain name that you are billing them for. Not a lawyer, but would bet big money you lose in a court of law any claim that you own the site.

That (now former) client is is overdue on multiple invoices to me/my company. Kiss the money goodbye, right? IANAL, but I'm pretty sure this is wrong. The company's debts do not disappear just becuase the company has been sold. If that were true, companies would be sold a lot more frequently...

It depends, jon1270. TheirMainCompetitors could have purchased all the assets without assuming any debts (like what happened with imeem and Myspace, leaving imeem artists in the lurch)

Take them to small claims court over the unpaid invoices. IANAL but your ownership of the domain doesn't seem so clear cut. Shutting it down and replacing it with a placeholder saying it's been suspended due to unpaid bills might give you leverage to get them to pay. Once they've paid what they owe i'd just transfer the domain to them and get on with life.

First off, your time is worth something, so decide if pursuing this is worth the hassle. I'm assuming it is or you wouldn't be making this post. Next, I'd probably want to talk to a lawyer. You maintain you own the URL. A case could be made that you don't. If you'd been paying the registration fee and passing that cost along the client probably viewed it as his. The people who bought that company probably view it as an asset they purchased. Etc. I'm just saying that it's possible that a judge could see it as an asset of the business that is behind in payment. Next, if you are getting decent referral business from the site then let it ride and forget it until you're contacted. You're probably the whois contact. I know if I bought a company I'd get a hold of the web guy eventually. For sure when I wanted it updated. I think you're conflating two issues. You're owed money. Can you get that from the people who bought the company or do you have to go after the original owners? And you have control of a domain. Do you own it and can you use this as leverage to get paid? If this were me I'd probably send the new company a letter telling them I'd like to progress with moving control of the URL to them and that I'm willing to work with them on getting this done, but that if I don't have paid invoices and a reasonable consulting fee for the time it'll take to do this that I will be contacting my lawyer to see about putting the domain up for sale to recoup my losses. Or more or less what FlamingBore said.

If it were me, I'd prepare an invoice detailing what the old client owes and add a (not greedy, but fair) bit of fees which would compensate me for the time and expense of collecting on this overdue bill. I'd then either make an appointment to speak with their billing dept or send the new owner a certified letter to let them know that the domain will be up for sale on XX/XX/2010 if I don't receive payment for my previous services. Keep the letter brief and to the point. You did a job and you simply want to get paid for your services; if you they won't pay you, then you will try to recoup your losses in the most feasible way possible. It's not personal, just business. Then, if you don't hear anything from them in a reasonable period of time, contact their competitor and see if they want to buy the domain.

New invoice to new owners, showing all monies owed with dates, with late fees/interest if you have that stipulated, a fair estimate of how much time it will take to transfer the credentials and the cost, and a very firm deadline. Possibly face-to-face with new owners. Possibly letter from lawyer. Small claims court. Anything that has even the faintest whiff of extortion is likely to end badly, even if you have a cast-iron paper trail showing your continued 'ownership' at their insistence, given that you were re-billing them for the domain registration and hosting costs. (It's not entirely clear whether OP was actually providing the hosting through either a shared account or on his/her own server. If that's the case, OP is completely justified in taking the site down so that MyDomain.com 404s.)