Hello to all,

So I am curious if it would be worthwhile to trademark a domain as a business name or identity?

If you buy a domain name, then you should be able to keep most people away from using your name. Although an alternative is possible, I am wondering if you need to trademark a doman name too if your going to use that domain as a businesss name too?

Thanks

ColoChris

Just piss on it and its trademarked...it works for lions...might work for deers too.

You may claim a defacto TM based on first use in a given class. You may have to defend that position in the future.

The actual process for filing and obtaining a "registered" TM is fairly cumbersome and time consuming.

Originally Posted by colochris

If you buy a domain name, then you should be able to keep most people away from using your name.

You'd think so ... but not really. First you have jurisdictional issues. I'm assuming you're writing from Colorado; I'm bound to your trademark in Washington state, but when you cross oceans and national borders, you have a lot less protection.

And then there are different contexts. Palmolive makes a dish soap called Ajax, and threatened to bring hell down on Ajax.org, a site about asynchronous javascript and xml; they backed down because they had little chance in court and risked significant public relations trouble. http://www.news.com/2100-1023-216899.html

In the US at least you have de facto protection by using your business name. You can't actually trademark it until you've begun using it. I don't think I'd file one unless I had a good reason to, given the pros, cons, and strength of protection at a personal level.

Trademark is a very messy and complicated subject. If you have very realistic concerns, talk to a lawyer who specializes in that field. Forums are great for knowledge, but I don't know of any practicing lawyers on here who specialize in that field.

From what I understand:
As soon as you start to give value to a certain name, logo, etc.... you have a defacto trademark for it. You can make an even better claim by putting the little superscript "TM" next to your logo, brand name, etc... You don't HAVE to register your trademark to get legal protection, but it can help. Now, protecting your name outside of your industry is much harder than witin the industry. An example of this would be Fannie Mae (the homeloan organization) and Fannie May (the candy store). They have names that are very similar, but are in completely different industries, and the use of the name for the one, doesn't really damage the other. However if they were in competitive industries, the one who can prove prior art will be able to get the other shut down.

As Forrest stated, protecting your trademark overseas can get VERY difficult. Usually the only way your going to be able to defend yourself from that one, would be by getting a lawyer and going after their registrar, as opposed to going at them directly.

my understanding you could service mark a domain in the computer field catagory int class 42 that would further clarify the service marks trade or service (perhaps the number catagories have changed..

Anyway it will be difficult to trademark a domain. Since we have several TLDs, If someone own for example webmaster-talk.com and someone else own own webmaster-talk.org, both of them are able to use the name.

If one of them want to forbid the other to use the name, it could be an expensive lawsuit. is ti worth it ? for multimillion dollars businesses may be, for smaller businesses probably not.

mork - on post #5 I think you were referring to copyright? Similar, but not the same. I believe all trademarks technically must be registered.

For domains, if you're name is original and brandable, you should probably trademark it. However, if it's generic you probably can't get a trademark unless you include the full url (site .com/.net, etc).

If your Trademark ends in the same .com, eu, uk as your domain yes you are the registered owner of that domain and you have the trademark to it. But if your site is called lets say when and who any one can register this trade mark. So if you want the actual wording that in your domain you will have to register it.