Strategy for Copyright/Trademark

relating to an existing website and another domain

[old_expat]

I have a "widget" site on place-widgets.com domain. Currently, the name of the site is Place-Widgets.com.

Placewidgets.com is not available, but is not active; so I recently made an unsolicited inquiry about buying it.

The asking price was actually sort of silly at $21,000

The owner made a comment that he has planned to develop a portal around this domain (yeah, I know).

So I got to wondering if I should try to get a trademark on Place-Widgets.com AND Place Widgets.com. If I could, that would preclude the owner of placewidgets.com from developing a portal with the same basic name and subject as my site .. wouldn't it?

Should I change the name of my site to Place Widget.com (no hyphen)?

[jtara]

I think it would be useful to mentally place yourself in the place of the other guy.

The answer should be obvious.

[old_expat]

I think it would be useful to mentally place yourself in the place of the other guy.

In terms of?

The answer should be obvious.

I guess I'm pretty thick but I don't have a clue what this means.