Not so nice competetor

Is there anything I can do about their domain name?

[dusterjh]

We have recently found a competetor has used our company name as a website domain for himself, he also has other competetors names as domains also which all websites have identical content. We are unsure of our legal rights, any advise would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Joe

[storevalley]

Best idea is to consult a lawyer, Joe.

[jbinbpt]

Hi Dusterjh,
I am not a lawyer, so this is winging it....

If it’s the site in you profile, you have not asserted that the company name is a trademark. That is an important step that needs to be takes to protect yourself. I also did a quick check of the Patent office (uspto.gov) and I do not see where the name was ever applied for as a trademark. This miht be a step you want to take.

You can make an argument for first use, although the length of time since you started using it and when you apply for protection might not work in your favor.

A good tool to help with the first use argument is the Wayback Machine [archive.org]

Good Luck,
jb

[Serio]

This has happened to clients of ours - we sent an email asking them to take the sites down with a threat to go to law if they didn't.

They just rolled over and did it - so it's worth a try - the law can be a very expensive option.

[dusterjh]

Hello all,

Thank you for the quick replies, we did contact this person I believe it is a single guy working from his home selling anything from normal consumer products to the industrial products we specialize in, he was very rude and just hung up on us. The owner of our company has contacted his lawyer but is still waiting to hear back from him (3 weeks ago). I will look into the trademarking our company name.

Regards,
Joe

[asd_uk]

You will have a problem enforcing any trademark name over someone who is already using the name.

Trademark enforcement normally works best if you have a trademark and then someone starts to use the name (this is then a breach of the trademark).

In fact depending on who was set up first you may find the other party has more rights to trademark the name (the fact that's it's one guy working from home has no effect) if he has established a place in the market using the name then you may struggle getting the trademark enforced. Normally first come first served. If you were operating first however then you have more of a case.

[bird]

In this case, I understand that the culprit is systematically exploiting the trademarks of several of his competitors. This means that he deliberately chose names that were already in use by other people, which should make legal enforcement easier than it would be otherwise.

It might also be worth contacting some of the other people he is infringing on. He may chose to ignore one lawyer, but ignoring half a dozen C&Ds from different sources about the same type of offense is likely to convince him to become a little more cooperative.

[too much information]

I hate to be a thorn in this thread, but if your company name is also a relevant term for your competator's site you may have trouble with this.

For example, an industry that affects one of my sites is "location widgets" now there is a company that called themselves exactly that, but the fact is that the search is relevant to many other services in that industry and not just that company.

If your company name is the name of an industry or service I would think that it would be very difficult for you to enforce a C&D against someone who is also competing in that industry, because although it is the name of your company, it is also a description of what they do.

Now on the other hand if your company name is more generic, like "dusterjh" and they bought dusterjh.com then I could see where you would have a clear case.

What seems to come to mind as a better idea is to see how many domains go to their site, maybe a duplicate content report would be more effective than worrying about them trying to gather mis-typed traffic.