Nominet and Trademark Disputes

Are these sites trading off our name

[burcot]

Our company name is "Blue Widgets Ltd", our domain is bluewidgets.co.uk

The two companies below sell exactly the same products as we do

1bluewidgets.co.uk

blue4widgets.co.uk

Our name is Trademarked and the domain was registered before either of the above.

Our solicitor is confident that court action would be successful (including any claim for damages) however, he suggested the likeliest outcome would be the companies going bust, leaving us to pick up the bill.

Question is, based on your experience, do you think Nominet would rule favourably on these two cases.

It will still cost approx £1k per case but we think it would be worth it. Besides, if we win, maybe the success wil motivate action against...

bluetowidgets.co.uk and widgetsblue.co.uk :~)

[IanTurner]

A lot of whether you get a favourable outcome will depend on how generic the <blue widgets> is and whether your company name and trademark precede the registration of the other domain names.

Nominets DRS policy is here
[nominet.org.uk...]

Effectively you need to show that you have rights in the name (which from what you say should not be a problem - company name and trademark are good indicators of rights in a name) and that the registration by the other organisations is abusive.

For instance if in the past your company had an affiliate scheme and had previously approved the use of the term in domains by affiliates - then there would be siginifcant doubt as to whether the registrations were abusive.

[burcot]

Unfortunately "blue" is a call to action and "widgets" is a generic product or rather - a broad group of products.

I don't know if Nominet consider the intent of the opposing website owner, if they do then I think we have a strong case.
If they don't then the best we can hope is to outrank them for their own name.