Domain name look-alike

Anything I can do about it?

[King_Fisher]

I have a domain name parked for a couple of years. I dusted it off in prepration of building a site with it. In checking it out I found that someone
had hypernated it and was running a site with that name. My domain name is"bluewidgets" his/her domain name is "blue-widgets". Am I just screwed or do I have any recourse? Anybody been down this road? Thanks!...KF

[edited by: King_Fisher at 5:23 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2007]

[Quadrille]

Really depends what a blue widget is!

For example, if you are Coca ColaCorp, and you own cocacola.com, you have a pretty good defense against coca-cola.com.

But if You are Jim Spiggins from Anytown, and you own bakedbeans.com, you have no say over baked-beans.com

If 'widget' is yours (ie you own the trademark), then it's worth fighting for it - but if it's generic-generic.com, then, sadly, no.

Remember Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Ninth Law - "If you own a quality domain name, then use it - or you may find the quality was an illusion"

In general, using a strong name is the best defense against having the name undermined by another site; but trademark ownership trumps almost very hand.

[King_Fisher]

Thanks Quad, as the old saying goes "you dont always get justice, but you always get the law"...KF

By the way what are the first eight Quad.laws?

[edited by: King_Fisher at 8:04 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2007]

[Quadrille]

Mostly too off-topic for this thread, but there's:

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 15th law

Always buy domain.com, if only to permanently redirect it to domain.somethingelse

There are very few honest guarantees in this business (plenty of dishonest ones) - but losing out to the .com ranks up there with the best of them: it's a dead cert.

Dot coms have many structural advantages; in browsers, in search and in visitors minds. Few people looking for a dot com accidentally get the dot net - but many who wanted the .net will end up on the .com. In most cases, using the .com is also preferable, the main exceptions being non-US local sites, and some non-English sites.

... After this discussion, I'll need to think seriously about:

"Always consider buying domains with similar names to yours ... before someone else does"

That's probably the basis of Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 27th law, once I've got the final wording right ;)

[planetdomain]

You could take it thru ICANN's UDRP (www.icann.org/udrp/) if you had a trademark, but it's an expensive process, and given the terms "blue" and "widgets" are common, you'll have a hard time nailing them on that, unless they're copying your logos and infringing on your IP with the content they host on your site, but that's a different form of litigation.

Of course if "blue widgets" was just an example and you do have a unique name and trademark, you've probably got a fighting chance.

[Marshall]

Depending on your location, some names cannot be copyrighted or trademarked if they contain common words, e.g.: baked beans. So a person owning bakedbeans.com probably would not have a leg to stand on against someone owning baked-beans.com. A real example is Russ Stuffed Animals. If you enter russ.com, you do not get their "official" web site. Theirs, I believe, is russberrie.com. Regardless, though the name Russ is registered, russ in and of itself is a common name so they could not get the rights to russ.com. It is not necessarily far, but those are the facts.

Marshall