Unfortunately, there aren't really many places that archive whois information. The one place I know of (domaintools.com) only has records going back to 2004 for your domain. If you transferred the domain to godaddy from another registrar, I'd be surprised if they don't have that information. Although, almost a decade later...

Not that it really matters. As long as you can establish a reasonable claim to the name, such as having a company that was registered under the name in question before there was an Internet, you shouldn't have any problems (talk to a lawyer to confirm this though). Generally I believe the rule has been that if two companies have the same name, domain names are on a first come-first served basis.

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The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.