The domain in question is sitting unused for past 11 years. Although, trademark is recent and you are holding the domain from very long time law should favour you. But because it is just sitting there without any use will make things complicated.
What I can understand from the facts you posted is they made a fair offer. They are is need of domain name and you are not using it at all. 11 years is a very long time and you are, willingly or unwillingly, blocking it for others. It will be good you not take this this to court and negotiate on a fair price.
Another alternative is, register the trademark in another category. In my country, there are 40 trademark categories. So making registration in any valid category should give you shield to protect the name.
I agree. Keeping the 'comments' part apart, I feel it was OK that this kind of story is shown on the frontpage. I visit google news multiple times in a day, but today HN was the first place I came to know about this incident. For the person living in that area, this can be a very useful info.
Thats a very good point. Most of my projects were rarely updated after first release. Building them was fun. Updates were mostly in cases when I received mails from people using it, and in some cases I realised a need of a feature (I use most of my creations).
What I can understand from the facts you posted is they made a fair offer. They are is need of domain name and you are not using it at all. 11 years is a very long time and you are, willingly or unwillingly, blocking it for others. It will be good you not take this this to court and negotiate on a fair price.
Another alternative is, register the trademark in another category. In my country, there are 40 trademark categories. So making registration in any valid category should give you shield to protect the name.