Trademarking a domain necessary ?

[mike2010]

From the short amount of research i've done , I still can't tell if I need to trademark my domain or not.

When I initially heard about this years ago, I always thought it was in regard to having a domain of a particular company's name or individuals name.

What if someone has a domain like i-like-food.com (thought of the name off the top of my head...I don't even think it's functional) or something similar where their just like random words in the domain ?

Would someone be able to steal our domain if they all of a sudden trademarked i-like-food.com ?

I never really thought about this much in the past, but I guess maybe I should. or shouldn't ?

And then I read that if you Trademark a domain, that means that you intend to use it for commerce. Well, I never intend to use this particular domain for commerce. but maybe someone else will & will decide to trademark the domain ?

without all the legal mumbo-jumbo talk, any advice on this is appreciated.

[lucy24]

"Commerce" doesn't have to mean you're in it for the money. It simply means you're identified by this name in some public way. Search the USPTO-- assuming you are in the US-- and you will find lots of nonprofit organizations with trademarked names. (I just checked a few at random that came to mind.)

You will need a lawyer to tell you what happens if someone tries to trademark a name that is already in use for a similar activity by someone else, or a conventional phrase like, ahem, "I like food". Or what happens if someone succeeds at something so beyond-the-pale ridiculous, no normal person would ever think of trying it, like trademarking the name of your state.

[mike2010]

Or what happens if someone succeeds at something so beyond-the-pale ridiculous, no normal person would ever think of trying it, like trademarking the name of your state.

I'm guessing because it would be an easy case to fight ?

[lucy24]

No, because against all reason and logic it really happened. Had to go to snopes.com to make sure, but way back in 1990 the state* of Kentucky registered its own name as a trademark, and for a long time afterward managed to scare a lot of businesses-- notably KFC-- into renaming themselves or else coughing up a lot of money for use of the name. So far I haven't been able to find out if it was registered nationally or only within the state, which has its own trademark office. Hard to believe they'd manage to pull it off nationally, or there would immediately have been 49 copycats.


* Commonwealth, if you want to be snarky about it.