Imagine that you have just had a great idea for a brilliant business. No one else has thought of it, in fact no one else could even do it. You are going to make a lot of money. So, you start setting up the business: set up a company, check; file a patent, check; register GreatIdea.com, oh dear that’s gone, Great-Ideas.com too, and GreatIdeas.net, etc.
Unfortunately, someone else has already registered them. They have no intention of actually running a business with that name, they simply took a lot of words that people might use for a business name, and registered them as domains. Why? To sell them to someone who is actually going to use that name. When setting up this business I looked at various names and the domains for pretty much all of them were already registered but not in use. I enquired about buying some of them and was quoted between $1,500 and $15,000. Can you imagine a small start-up being able to pay $15,000 for GreatIdea.com? I cannot.
The people doing this are leeches, hoping to profit from the ideas and effort of others. A plague on all their houses.