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Is a Domain Name an Automatic Trademark?
TheWorkingStiff writes "I registered a descriptive domain name (something like "thesimpledog.com") and started a blog on it. About a month later I get a threatening letter from a link farmer who owns "simpledog.com" The owner of simpledog.com is claiming that he owns the trademark to the words simpledog even though he has no real business or rights by that name other than a static page with some text and Adsense slapped on it. There is no product, service or brand whatsoever. Does simply registering a two or three word domain give you instant trademark rights to those words even though you've never done anything with them? Should I give up my domain to a link farmer who is trying to bully me, or does he have a valid right to any phrase he registers that isn't already trademarked?"
Question: Is a Domain Name an Automatic Trademark?
Answer: Ask a lawyer not Slashdot.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
It wouldn't matter if he did have a trademark.
It would cover his area of business, not an unrelated blog. There is no way that somebody would find the sites "confusingly similar."
The guy's just trying to introduce a second revenue stream from his link farm. If anything, I think your site would increase traffic to his site, when people type it wrong.
I'm gonna need a spec.
Honestly, I'd just asking him for the USPTO serial/registration number for his trademark (and obviously search the uspto web site to verify it). If he has one, he's shown he actually cares about it, plus he's got all the paperwork he needs to dispute your domain with ICANN. Do you really want to spend time and money fighting at that point?
But of course he doesn't have one, so just asking will show him you're not just going to hand over a domain because you got a nasty email, which is what he's expecting. If he tries to quickly file the papers, he'll discover that just owning a domain name is not enough to even file for a trademark, much less get one. He'll have to find other uses of it (prior to yours) to complete the paperwork, and if his site is just a link farm it's questionable whether even his web site would qualify.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
You're technically correct but only that. The argument doesn't apply to the real world in which we have legal systems and laws, trademarks, fair use, etc.
Likewise a business name is just a bit of marketing that happens to be helpful to humans for branding puroses, conceptually not different to a person name for identification.
Also technically correct, but cannot stand on its own in the real world.