I've been poached rather differently - I formed a limited liability company, and found that as soon as my formation was made official, someone had registered "$mycompanyname.com". Foolish on my part I suppose.
I do find it rather odd that the owner isn't responding to contact via the whois record - seems an odd sort of extortion where they don't want to take your money.
On this one, if the date you registerred the LLC is before the registration record was created (do a whois on the domain) you might be able to file a UDRP complaint (Uniform DOmain Name Resolution Policy) claiming that the current owner registerred the name in bad faith, with the expectation that they were going to extort you for the ownership of the .com.
This sort of stuff happens all the time. As far as I know, it's not usually passed with respect to LLC but rather Trademark.
Regardless, if you really want that name you could have a fighting chance at it.
Look up UDRP to learn more. Better yet UDRP lawyer. There's one who advertises a lot on some of the forums I read. Let me know if you're interested and I can put a bit more legwork into tracking down a name for you.
This is a great point, and likely you'll win a UDRP because the registrant will ignore the request (if they're guilty). However, filing a UDRP costs about $1,300.
Entrepreneurs should always register the domain name BEFORE you register for your company.
Not as trivial in the .com.au space if you're doing everything by the book becuase you must register the domain to a particular ABN or ACN (business or company number). Can register it to one entity and try to later transfer it, but not sure how annoying that is. Even one form is enough of a roadblock for me sometimes so I just register all mine to a single ACN.
This is a commonplace-type issue with all public documents. For example, every time I am granted a trademark (which are publicly published upon grant), I receive a letter on official-looking stationary sayingnincan protect my trademark for $3,000. It's a complete racket by a company with an official sounding name but unaffiliated with the USPTO.
I do find it rather odd that the owner isn't responding to contact via the whois record - seems an odd sort of extortion where they don't want to take your money.