Affiliate with TM name??

[2002mjf]

Hi, I was wondering if I should reg. a name that I found in .ws and become an affiliate of that company. The company is a large multi-national corperation whose name is known in virtually every country in the world. The name is the EXACT company name and is definitely TM'ed. Any thoughts???? Reg. it and hope to become an affiliate? or just say F**K it and let it go? Part of me already knows the answer, but actually finding that name available shocked me, and I have been hemming and hawing over it. Thanks in advance, Mark

BTW, I will NOT mention the company name, so please don't ask.

 

[BitcoinDK]

Here is a crazy idea...Why not try to become an affiliate first then buy the domain?

Best regards,

 

[2002mjf]

Here's is a crazy answer.....Very limited amount of time to get the name!!!!!

And also, that does not answer the legal question!!!

 

[Ben42]

You'd be playing with fire and then put yourself on their radar. Not a good idea to reg it.

 

[soggyindo]

get it and sell it on ebay - someone will be crazy enough to do as you suggested

 

[jberryhill]

Read the affiliate agreement.

 

[Dave_Z]

Read the affiliate agreement.

And that's really the answer to your question, 2002mjf.

 

[RogueWriter]

Any decent affiliate program will allow you to make legitimate money without going over to the dark side for short term potential.

The best way to be profitable in affiliate marketing is to find a program that you like, investigate the various niches that program supports, then pick up a generic term based on the products within one of those niches.

 

[Kate]

Being an affiliate is an example where you might be allowed to use a domain that contains a TM. Try to secure their permission in writing before
But I would avoid the exact name under another TLD like .ws.

 

[2002mjf]

Thank you for all your answers. I think I will just avoid the whole issue altogether and save myself the headache. The short and long term gains are not worth the hassel of dealing with a TM issue. I think that even asking them for permission would not work as the name is not generic or included in a longer domain name...It is exactly the name. I don't think a company of this size would allow myself or anyone else for that matter to use it, even if it was for the companies gain. Thanks again for the conformation, Mark

 

[BitcoinDK]

As an former distributor in Denmark for an big company, my experience is, that if you are serious about distributing or being an affiliate for the big company. And contact them about this, they will not have any problem if you want to use there brands name in other extensions.

Of course you have to have a written aggreement with them before you do anything with the domain. Or else they will look at this as if you have done this in bad faith and they wont make an aggreement with you.

If you can convinced them of that you are serious about this, and not just a hustler that just want to buy and resell the domain, you would be surprised how much they will help you.

Thats what I have had experienced with my contact to the big companies. You just have to be serious and respectable, thats it.

Best regards,

 

[Ben42]

To me it would seem like BAD business for a company to allow this.

Even as an affiliate; say the website is down, or you misspell a bunch of words on the site, link to an adult site, ect then it would look VERY poorly on them. There is no way any company would allow this, unless they are REALLY desperate for sales.

 

[BitcoinDK]

Ben42, you are right about the things you say. In my situation, I had to send every single change I did to the website to the company, who had to accept the changes before I was allowed to use it.

But they did not once tell me "NO" to do the changes I did. You just have to be upfront with them.

Best regards,

 

[thetux]

Uh.

That'd be like trying to register GoDaddy.ws and become a godaddy reseller.

Sometimes I wonder where some of your brains have gone.