Do I have any recourse?

Same domain name...almost

[rogue]

I own a domain name www.mydomain.com. since Oct. 2000.
Yesterday in checking my links I found a site with domain name www.themydomain.com. The other site is in a different state U.S. and engages in exactly the same service I do.
Do I have any recourse?

[heini]

Is your domain name a brandname, is it trade marked?

[rogue]

Brandname

[netguy]

Rogue... A brand certainly won't have the strength of a trademark in court, but I'm not sure whether it is worth fighting anyway. Just like many people using the .net of the same domain... often the benefit will go to the .com holder anyway.

For example, I have had domains over the years that people have added words to, and the end result is they end up sending a lot of additional traffic to my site due to the fact they left 'the' off, or added 'zone' 'world' or 'online' at the end.

If it is really offensive to you, you might send a letter out from your attorney and try to scare them off, but otherwise, unless you see them siphoning off YOUR traffic, and getting ahead of you in the search engines, I wouldn't worry too much.

The good news, of course, is that there is a permanent record of who had the domain first, so if there is a court battle, you are in great shape from a 'first-use' standpoint.

[rogue]

netguy... Thats what I figured. A friend of mine is in the same situation and from what he tells me is that a copycat is just a copycat and that he gets a lot of traffic from the confusion alone, not to mention the SERP results from an optimized site such as mine. I'll let it lay for now... thanks for the advice.