Greetings Pro's,
I am seeking advice for challenging a trademark application recently filed for a term of which I own the .com. The phrase is two words and has recently been used more commonly since it was coined by Donald Trump back in November 2016. I have been planning a website project using this phrase and was delighted to learn back in November that the .com was expired and would soon be dropping. I was not the only one that had plans for this domain name. The drop day came on January 5th and I ended up getting the name.. Great right? Well here is what happened next..
As soon as the group which filed the trademark realized they did not win the name, they immediately went out and registered the same phrase in .com with "get" at the beginning. They made me an offer on my domain via a GoDaddy buying rep a few hours after the name was caught by me which I turned down. They then published a very basic website with some contact info, about us info with some graphics (most of which they were already using from a related website with a completely different name). They filed the trademark 2 days before the domain even dropped (on the 3rd) and of course 2 days before they had their own version of the domain name with "get" at the beginning.
I believe this to not be worthy of being granted a trademark on the grounds that this phrase is a general term coined by a famous person and that they have produced no real content using the name. They are just rushing to beat me to the punch to get the rights to the name right out from under me. Had I realized this was going to happen I would have put some content up on the domain immediately, but I instead was planning and conceptualizing exactly what I wanted to do for the website. I have since started a basic website to get my idea going (the idea is different from theirs but somewhat similar subject matter)
I am going to challenge the trademark application in the next day or so and I would appreciate your thoughts on how I could most effectively do this.
Thanks for your time,
I am seeking advice for challenging a trademark application recently filed for a term of which I own the .com. The phrase is two words and has recently been used more commonly since it was coined by Donald Trump back in November 2016. I have been planning a website project using this phrase and was delighted to learn back in November that the .com was expired and would soon be dropping. I was not the only one that had plans for this domain name. The drop day came on January 5th and I ended up getting the name.. Great right? Well here is what happened next..
As soon as the group which filed the trademark realized they did not win the name, they immediately went out and registered the same phrase in .com with "get" at the beginning. They made me an offer on my domain via a GoDaddy buying rep a few hours after the name was caught by me which I turned down. They then published a very basic website with some contact info, about us info with some graphics (most of which they were already using from a related website with a completely different name). They filed the trademark 2 days before the domain even dropped (on the 3rd) and of course 2 days before they had their own version of the domain name with "get" at the beginning.
I believe this to not be worthy of being granted a trademark on the grounds that this phrase is a general term coined by a famous person and that they have produced no real content using the name. They are just rushing to beat me to the punch to get the rights to the name right out from under me. Had I realized this was going to happen I would have put some content up on the domain immediately, but I instead was planning and conceptualizing exactly what I wanted to do for the website. I have since started a basic website to get my idea going (the idea is different from theirs but somewhat similar subject matter)
I am going to challenge the trademark application in the next day or so and I would appreciate your thoughts on how I could most effectively do this.
Thanks for your time,
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