Are plurals a copyright infringement of the singular?

[Zutroy]

Hi folks, I am a newbie so please excuse any ignorance in this field, but I need to clarify a couple of things in regards to domain names and trademarks, firstly is it true that all plural versions of a domain name are automatically a trade mark infringement of the singular, if they are registered afterwards, I read something about if you are a US citizen that as soon as you register a name you are automatically protected by the common law trademark and that any other registrations are infringements. So are loans.com or creditcards.com automatically an infringement, if the singular was registered first by somebody else? If so does this also apply the other way if somebody registers the plural first?

Also how does this apply to different extensions of either the plural, singular, or even the exact same word, assuming it’s a generic term and not obviously an infringement in any extension like “microsoft windows” would be, is creditcard.net an infringement of creditcard.com if it too was registered by somebody else afterwards? Also is all this internationally legally enforceable? I live in the UK, would somebody been protected by a US common law trademark be a problem for me?

Many thanks in advance

John

 

[Zutroy]

I have looked into it more and it seems descriptive terms are very hard to trade mark and generic terms you can’t TM at all, any trade mark even under common law has to be earned and in the case of a descriptive term would require significant public recognition, even if you put a website on it and engage in some kind of business related to that field you have to be relatively significant to qualify.

This is my understanding of it thus far, if anybody else thinks differently feel free to correct me.

 

[Jaco]

Im not a lawyer, but my understanding is that use has a big role in how this sort of thing is determined, however, there is no universal standard in UDRP rulings and they can be capricious as hell.

Example: I enjoy playing the bass guitar. The bass guitar I play is a Fender Jazz Bass.
Fender has a TM on "Jazz Bass", so, unless someone challenges their TM and invalidates it, no one else can make a bass and call it a "Jazz Bass".

Very recently, I saw "Jazz/Basses" sitting there as a drop and bought it. Now, the plural is pretty clearly generic since any brand of bass can be used to play Jazz music. If I were to develop the name into a forum for Jazz bassists, that's one thing. If I were to develop it into an affiliate mashup peddling Fender Jazz bass products, they probably wouldn't have much trouble taking it away, since I would be leaning on their brand. Further, the trend seems to be that if you leave a name like this parked and the aggregator fills it up with ads for the Fender Jazz Bass, they can take it from you there, too.

Some people would call it a gray area, but I don't. If it is a gray area, then it's trending heavily on the lighter side of gray and it's a place I have no problem being, since I have no intent to develop the name in such a way that it violates against the Fender brand. Obviously, there would be examples of plural names that don't fall into the 'good' category. It's one thing to own Apples.com, it's another thing to own Microsofts.com.