Someone has my domain name only with -- inbetween. Help

[momsadvertising]

I was wondering if anyone knows of legalities of domain names and names. I don't have the name www.keywordkeyworddirectory.com trademarked but someone now has the name www.keyword-keyword-directory.com. Can I tell them to take it down?

Thanks
Kristina

[edited by: tedster at 9:42 pm (utc) on Aug. 18, 2004]
[edit reason] remove specific domain name [/edit]

[kodaks]

Probably not, since you don't copyright. You may want to copyright it quickly before the other one does.

[bhartzer]

[quote]Can I tell them to take it down?[quote]

Probably not unless you own the Trademarked name. But you could try contacting them to see if they want to sell it to you.

[MarkWolk]

Has anyone here actually trademarked their "domainname" or "domain-name"? What were the costs involved? Was that trademarking successful? Did it efficiently prevent anyone anywhere in the world from registering i.e. domainname.co.nz or domainname.bg etc?

[chicagohh]

Can I tell them to take it down?

Yes. You don't have a case, but who cares? Do what many companies have done: threaten with a lawsuit. Often, people will flat out panic if they receive an ominous letter from an attorney. I seem to get a threat once a month - sometime more.

IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer)

[Webwork]

IAAL - I am a lawyer but I don't give legal opinions to posters in forums

If it's 'keyword' - like broad, generic keyword - for example 'business' + 'directory' - forget trademark and forget the letter. You might be protected from someone creating a print directory that employs your domain name, but the protection you get form owning WidgetDirectory.com is that there IS only one WidgetDirectory.com available for registration.

KW-KWrepeated-Directory may be beating you in the SERPs for awhile, due to factors other than the repeated KW - but when a directory chooses to survive based upon such an identity it certainly looks like SE spam, manipulation, amateur - you name it.

The best defense/offense for your directory isn't its domain name alone. What also counts is its useful content, ease of navigation, etc.

Webwork, Esq.

[Freedom]

I've had this happen to me. It didn't turn out to be a big deal.

HOwever, let me point out that you should get both the plural and singular of your name.

I made the mistake of not getting qualitywidgetsdotcom when I had qualitywidgetdotcom -

I know I sent them a lot of traffic by people typing in the url and adding an s to the name.

[LateNight]

I made the mistake of not getting qualitywidgetsdotcom when I had qualitywidgetdotcom<<<<<<<<<

Just found out about that.....they got plural ,as well as, ing. I just bought their company domain for info, biz, org, net and ws versions. Hopefully I can use that to get back my plural and ingdotcom.

[chrisnrae]

We recently bought a domain for a new business we are opening online and my first thought was that I wanted the site to be name-keyword.com for SE reasons (a derivitation of our legal company name). I also bought the namekeyword.com version because I knew the dash wouldn't likely be remembered for type ins.

I really didn't bother purchasing the other variations, only because I have had people by the .net's of my .com's several times now and it has never been a big deal. But, most of my sites rely on SE's for traffic and not branding. If anything, they probably send traffic to ME when people type it in.