discuss Protecting your brand

Sounds like all three wackos have been doing just fine, without any brand protection. Good luck on your endeavor, no imposter is a legitimate imposter without a legitimate brand.

Tomhandsome said:

Now I see why it is important to owning the exact match for your brand in the top tld you can.

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You cannot protect your brand without a legal team, there are too many extensions, you cannot register them all.

To own a trademark means you have to defend it, you are obligated to contact anyone that infringes and protect your mark. If you do not do that you can lose your mark and believe me all that costs money.

You can see by how easily you bought the domain, if not the com then the net etc. One does not have to own the .com to protect ones mark.

Important to own the name yup but I run 5 businesses and have dropped the .com for all but MapleDots.com because it is the only one that operates outside of Canada. So for me the .com is irrelevant and the ccTLD is more important.

So your theory has some good points but also some of holes. The only way to protect your assets is through legal that which why trademarks, copyrights etc are such a complicated issue.

MapleDots said:

You cannot protect your brand without a legal team, there are too many extensions, you cannot register them all.

To own a trademark means you have to defend it, you are obligated to contact anyone that infringes and protect your mark. If you do not do that you can lose your mark and believe me all that costs money.

You can see by how easily you bought the domain, if not the com then the net etc. One does not have to own the .com to protect ones mark.

Important to own the name yup but I run 5 businesses and have dropped the .com for all but MapleDots.com because it is the only one that operates outside of Canada. So for me the .com is irrelevant and the ccTLD is more important.

So your theory has some good points but also some of holes. The only way to protect your assets is through legal that which why trademarks, copyrights etc are such a complicated issue.

Click to expand...

If you own .COM plus the ccTLD of your country of operation, you will be better off. I checked out a potential customer and they owned .com but did not regg the ccTLD of their main business country for 10 years almost. Now the ccTLD is owned by an escorts site with nudes of front page.

MapleDots said:

You cannot protect your brand without a legal team, there are too many extensions, you cannot register them all.

To own a trademark means you have to defend it, you are obligated to contact anyone that infringes and protect your mark. If you do not do that you can lose your mark and believe me all that costs money.

You can see by how easily you bought the domain, if not the com then the net etc. One does not have to own the .com to protect ones mark.

Important to own the name yup but I run 5 businesses and have dropped the .com for all but MapleDots.com because it is the only one that operates outside of Canada. So for me the .com is irrelevant and the ccTLD is more important.

So your theory has some good points but also some of holes. The only way to protect your assets is through legal that which why trademarks, copyrights etc are such a complicated issue.

Click to expand...

I agree to some extent but it's not that simple.

If you own a brand and operate under MyWittyBrand.cctld you definitely want to kill the option of someone else using MyWittyBrand.com even if you operate under a strong (like .CA) ccTLD.

There's always the option for someone to go with an inferior TLD but if they cannot get the ccTLD or .com there's a higher probability they will go for AnotherWittyBrand.cctld or .com which will eventually help you with SEO.

Would they use the same MyWittyBrand, they could push you down in search results, doesn't matter if they're operation in the same or another niche (globally or on a national level), when people search for the exact match.

Regarding Op's selling tactic. That's cybersquatting.

It's cybersquatting. Might be dangerous if you live in the same country, you could be sued. Unless you register her/his lastname, you could be safe.

Is it cybersquating if he holds no Trademarks and he let the domain expire?

MapleDots said:

You cannot protect your brand without a legal team, there are too many extensions, you cannot register them all.

To own a trademark means you have to defend it, you are obligated to contact anyone that infringes and protect your mark. If you do not do that you can lose your mark and believe me all that costs money.

You can see by how easily you bought the domain, if not the com then the net etc. One does not have to own the .com to protect ones mark.

Important to own the name yup but I run 5 businesses and have dropped the .com for all but MapleDots.com because it is the only one that operates outside of Canada. So for me the .com is irrelevant and the ccTLD is more important.

So your theory has some good points but also some of holes. The only way to protect your assets is through legal that which why trademarks, copyrights etc are such a complicated issue.

Click to expand...

YES

• Therefore, it is important to protect the brand domain name
  

DirkS said:

I agree to some extent but it's not that simple.

If you own a brand and operate under MyWittyBrand.cctld you definitely want to kill the option of someone else using MyWittyBrand.com even if you operate under a strong (like .CA) ccTLD.

There's always the option for someone to go with an inferior TLD but if they cannot get the ccTLD or .com there's a higher probability they will go for AnotherWittyBrand.cctld or .com which will eventually help you with SEO.

Would they use the same MyWittyBrand, they could push you down in search results, doesn't matter if they're operation in the same or another niche (globally or on a national level), when people search for the exact match.

Regarding Op's selling tactic. That's cybersquatting.

Click to expand...

• What happens if the brand's domain name is not protected
  

https://www.namepros.com/threads/what-happens-when-you-dont-protect.1220075/

Tomhandsome said:

Is it cybersquating if he holds no Trademarks and he let the domain expire?

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In your case? Yes. There is no general answer to the question. It depends on the case.

The business you targeted has definitely established a trademark by common law:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregistered_trademark

That in itself doesn't necessarily mean you cannot own the domain, and not be cybersquatting, however you explicitly registered this domain to target the company operating the brand. So:

A. Confusingly similar
B. No legitimate interest in the name
C. Registered in bad faith.

The moment you reach out to that company you will have signed your fate.

Will it come back to bite you? Depends. People make this work all the time. It works. Untill you encounter that one business that will decide to file the complaint.

It's up to you to decide what kind of trader you want to be. Are you a hustler or a businessman? It makes all the difference.

That being said, this is just my opinion based on the facts you posted. There could be more to the story which could make it totally legitimate, like I touched upon earlier.

For anyone interested, if you want to read up on this subject matter and be educated by a real pro look up some posts by @jberryhill . He contributed a lot of great posts/comments on TM questions throughout the years.

What he said.