Their trademark predates the .chat TLD (I looked it up on TESS).

Nevertheless, your use is arguably different (this distinction matters under trademark law). You're no doubt going to call the business (if it even is a business) something other than TINYCHAT, and are going to have a substantially different trademark.

This is tricky (and IANAL), but I'd simply not respond if you are actually in good faith preparing a different product with a different market. Simply owning a domain doesn't make you a trademark infringer. There is no dot in their trademark (service mark) name. They could have included a dotted version in their trademark application, and they opted not to.

In addition, to avoid further headaches with those people, consider coming up with a different name for your product, and simply redirect your URL to that different name.

A. When did "tinychat.com" launch?

B. When did "tiny.chat" launch?

If B < A: tell them to go jump

Else: contact a lawyer

You'd probably have to look into whether TLDs count toward copyright, e.g. if company ABCXYZ (TM) could claim against abc.xyz.

The reallllly important thing is that you're not calling your chat app TinyChat, but Tiny. If you are calling it TinyChat and started after they opened, you'love need to reassess. If you're calling it Tiny, then you're better off.

Not a lawyer, just what I've experienced the laws around this to be.

Great Idea!!!! I can call my Tiny, It sounds better too.

I just hope there is no TM violation for Tiny. ;)

[IANAL]

Paying a lawyer to draft a letter was deemed cheaper than trying to purchase the domain. That's why they did that instead of offering to purchase it.

There's an asymmetry of expense involved if they "lawyer up" and you just stonewall. To them, that's the minimum value of the domain name. You can always "lawyer up" later to further increase their costs.

However, none of that matters. What matters is how much it is worth to you to keep the domain.

Good luck.

I think you are ok in this case, but see if you can get a free consultation with a lawyer that deals with trademarks.

If you had a domain like macbookprocase I would be a bit more worried.

free, online domain appraisals are worthless.