She went on to say that this person wasn't very helpful (rude in her words) in providing her with the information she required to setup his request. She had to check with any existing business of the same name (entity or dot com) and make sure that it would not conflict with their business.
She had me hooked at this point, business has been good and very few clients type in my URL they simply click on an AW or OV advert. They'd probably never really look at the TLD.
She then offered to provide me with what she considered my rightful domains for the reasonable price of L100 each for a 2 year registration. At this point I took her telephone number and other details and offered her a delaying excuse, such as, "I can't proceed until my partner agrees to it and won't be back till late today."
With her off the phone I could now sit back and relax and ponder how easily someone can confuse me through fear and anxiety (its only going to get worse with age!). Still it made sense to protect my investment and with this wonderful site located a very good registrar <snip> and paid L6.95 plus vat for each domain for 2 years.
Can anyone tell me what he or she are doing to protect their branding. Yes, trademarking and vigilance is necessary but can be expensive to enforce. So I guess what I'm asking, is there any other holes that I need to plug?
[edited by: engine at 8:03 pm (utc) on Jan. 9, 2004]
[edit reason] specific removed [/edit]
This in my opion is not allowed and its DeFraud situation and complain to the appropiate authority.
You could start with ur local county authority or the appropiate Police force.
She was 14-years-old, and she'd registered a .co.uk domain that described what her website was about (it was basically a small site featuring pictures, stories, news and information about a certain range of collectibles). The website hosted at the .com version of her domain is some sort of European (I believe) ecommerce website -- it's about something totally different. She was sent a letter from a lawyer of the owner of the .com domain acusing her of trying to scam people by pretending to be them, and that she must give them her .co.uk domain immediately, otherwise she would be taken to court. Her mother telephoned the lawyer explaining how she was only 14 and what her domain name was for, but the laywer said that she'd "still have to hand over her domain anyway".
Now, I'm not a legal expert, but I do have a basic idea of how trade marks work. Apple is a registered trademark. Apple Computer have the rights to use the name Apple in the computing industry. Someone else wouldn't be allowed to set up a computer-related company called Apple. However, Apple don't have rights to the word 'Apple' in any industry. I could start a brand of hair shampoo called Apple if I wanted to, and Apple Computer wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Although the .co.uk domain that my friend had registered was that of a registered trademark, it's a trademark in a totally different industry. Her domain also described the nature of her website.
So... was this a scam as well, or was the owner of the .com domain just being bloody minded?
They are still available now; the call I got was probably 6 to 9 months ago.
It depends what came 1st the registration of the website by ur friend or the trademark?
To be honest, I'm not 100% certain that it is a trademark.
The trademark does not cover the full domain name, so only part of it.
If this other outfit say that anything containg keyword1 in any phrase or form part of a bigger word, is considered a trade infringement then you'll have to find out whether this is true or not as they might be pulling the whool over your eyes.
For example: Joe User registers a domain with keyword1stuff.com and in legal terms the use of keyword1 is deemed as a trade infrindgement by legal experts then you can't argue with that fact.
The only argument I can see is if the keyword is a place, a name, etc and not a product.
Then you might argue the case the keyword is too general and widely used by everyone.
Thats my 2 cents on that. (from a non-legal expert)
For the most part, lawyers can be bullies because people are really afraid of being sued. I would think that the lawyer and his client would look pretty stupid walking in front of a judge against a little 14 year old girl who wanted to do a hobby web site.
If it was my kid, I'd tell that lawyer how stupid he and his client will look when the press gets wind of the story, and if that's what they are after... bring it on.
