Dynadot

domains Trade Marks and Evolution... or

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch

Reddstagg

The-Billionaire.comTop Member
Impact
3,546
The Evolution of Trademarks.

As the joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize have now been announced I thought that I would share something with you that you may or not already know.

Long story...shortened. I wrote a book which we shall call 'Dandelion Diamonds'. Job done, now sit back and wait for the money to roll in. Check Amazon for listings...wait a minute! What do I see? Another book called 'Dandelion Diamonds and the Zombies from Mars'.

That can't be right I thought so I contacted the Publisher and was surprised to be informed that there is no Trade Marks or legal protection for the title of a book. This it seems has caused many a problem in bookshops across the world.

I moved on from this annoying discovery (o.k I will eventually) and it got me thinking about Trade Marks and names and such and my view is contentious to say the least.

On the day that I register a domain name, whether .com or .anything, the rest of the world could have also registered the same name. It is first come first served. This is a business after all and cynics could argue that it is dog eat dog.

Large corporations often cross the lines between what they can get away with and what is morally or legally right. They have the money behind them to back track as necessary. How can one supermarket use another supermarket's name and brand name to publicize their own products.

If I went out today and bought a house, would we expect someone else to go to court or arbitration and state that they were going to buy the same house and as they already own ten other houses it should be given to them. That makes no sense...right.

I'm a relative beginner at domain investing and I also have a few other irons in my fire. Being a little naive, I registered some domains which may have been seen as Trade Mark infringements, but I was genuinely planning to reach out to the Company to see whether we could develop my ideas. The Company name is a well established dictionary name and even goes back thousands of years in history.

I read as much as I could about domain investing and then panicked. I was going to jail and they would take my last 92 bucks off me as a fine.

Then I panicked some more and cancelled the contentious domains.

On reflection, I can see that the Evolution of Trade Marks will turn full circle and once our business is taken more seriously by those that don't fully understand it we will wield more power than we do now. Corporations will probably even include domain investing in their tech and digital marketing budgets as they will have to build the box before their bright young things get to think outside of it whilst wearing their flop-flips staring at the blue sky.

I am not so scared of Corporations as I was before, and I would urge you all to check and double check Trade Mark registrations carefully as they are not as prudent as you think. For example, a famous women's clothes brand have now started selling men's clothes and they have been careful to also register their brand name as xxxxxxxmen.com. However, they do not yet sell baby clothes so did not register all of the available domains which include 'baby'. So now I own 'xxxxxxx.baby'. Clever, or not. Only time will tell.

As the founder of a multi billion dollar empire once proclaimed 'Ask for forgiveness, not for permission'.

If the pioneers who went before us had not bent a few rules, would they have continued and succeeded anyway and would they also be able to achieve today what they achieved then.

Probably.not.com
 
0
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
There are plenty of keyword domain names available, so why in the world would you or anyone else play with fire (obvious trademarks)? :(
 
0
•••
There are plenty of keyword domain names available, so why in the world would you or anyone else play with fire (obvious trademarks)? :(

I appreciate your feedback and your comments. However, where should we draw the line? I note that you have a domain name of 'SmsCompany .com. Are you 100% sure that there is no trademark infringement by the use of the letters 'SMS', which is more widely known as a text message, but was indeed created and named as such by the inventors as part of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).

I think my point is that it is a perception of a somewhat grey area. Can anybody categorically state whether it is acceptable to trademark an 'apple' or a colour? Yes and no I suppose. I'm sure there are many CEOs who wished that they had applied for a trademark of their company name.

If we were not to be pushing the boundaries of convention, then every domain registered after today will just be a rather bland and uninformative www. LLLLL.com with no logical brand awareness.
 
0
•••
For me domain name Industry and Trade mark Industry is a separated things. But also maybe happened all around the world that those two thing cant be separated. Often I see Big Brand always win if they go to the court regarding domain name dispute.
 
0
•••
Back