Is Your Domain Name Infringing on Someone’s Trademark?
Almost everyone these days has a website, sometimes with a quickly-chosen domain name as the website address. When chosen, you may have been searching for an available domain name which invoked the content you wanted to put on your website, or which contained your business name and, when the desired domain name was not available, settled on your second choice. Sometimes, in frustration, people just select anything close.
Whether you’ve had luck or not securing the domain name you preferred, I wonder if you took a moment to consider the intellectual property rights issues involved? Did you consider whether or not the selected domain name would infringe on someone else’s trademark or, even more importantly, whether or not your domain name could easily be “infringed” upon by someone else?
The rules for who has priority to a domain name are different from the rules for who has priority to a trademark. It’s easy to get a domain name; you can register a name that is just one character different from another domain name. It’s harder to establish trademark rights but, when you do, your trademark will have priority over a domain name. You can protect your intellectual property rights in the trademark if you can show that you commercially used a mark first, allowing you to stop others from using your mark, including in a domain name.
One way to compromise your intellectual property rights in a trademark or domain name is to select a descriptive or generic word as part of the name. Though attractive for marketing purposes, a descriptive name such as “Coupons, Inc.” or “coupons.com” will give the owners no recourse from others who use the word coupon in their business name, in a domain name or in any other advertising form. Such words may make it easy for the consuming public to find you but their widespread, non-distinctive, use makes such words unavailable for monopolization.
As an arbitrator for domain name disputes, I hate to see a new domain name registrant infringe on the intellectual property rights of an established business, but I cannot order the transfer of a domain name with such generic words. For instance, a registrant of “coupons.org” would prevail in a domain name Complaint by the owner of “coupons.com”, even where the Complainant invested millions in advertising “coupons.com.”
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Tags: Intellectual, property, protection, Rights
