You see JB?
I'm learning!
The other thing you'll notice about a lot of the questions on Namepros is that there is an implicit understanding of the basic idea of trademarks, but the obsession with trademark registration databases gets in the way. Using no trademark database at all, it's pretty obvious where the OP is getting their domain name ideas, since Google easily shows...
So, you don't really have to wonder where the idea of "marca.news" comes from...
Again, there's no mystery here, as ten seconds with Google demonstrates "Marca" is a prominent Spanish news publication. This being Namepros, of course, along comes the helpful suggestion to check the trademark registration database in the US, which is totally irrelevant to the apparent motivation to register the domain name.
It is worth mentioning that "Marca" is also a dictionary word. But, in combination with "news" and with zero hint as to what, if anything, this domain name is going to be doing, again, it's pretty clear that saying "Oh, check a trademark database somewhere" is not going to be extremely helpful in addressing the root misunderstanding here.
The underlying more important question of "can I go try to sell someone domain names that are obviously premised on their marks" is driven home by the entire trio really. Again, not even five seconds with Google...
You don't even need to click on anything to read, in the first Google result, that they've been around since 1982.
That one is a good example because, sure, you get some minor sprinkling among the results of an academic program of some kind, but when the first, say, 50 or so Google results are all pointing at a huge international insurance business, and only one huge international insurance business, then it's safe to say that "Zurich International" is not some generic term for insurance but is a distinctive identifier of one entity in the relevant insurance market. That is the very definition of a trademark.
The last one is equally as sad, but also shows another useful feature of Google - the "related searches" or questions that Google generates in response to a query... at the bottom of these results:
Gee... it looks like the search term "meet bard" turns up a bunch of "Related questions" all of which have to do with the Google product. Now, sure, it's Google's search engine, but let's get real. Do you think there is a market for a domain name that is descriptive of wandering poets?
Continuing with the search results, it's pretty clear that "Meet Bard" is, in fact, the name of Google's introductory video:
And, again, none of the first batch of Google results has anything to do with anything other than Google's product.
Could someone coincidentally stumble onto one of these names by happenstance? Sure.
In a large domain portfolio will some domain names have incidentally significance as trademarks? Sure.
But this OP really crystallizes the basic problem we see here time and time again. The OP manages a perfect three for three shot of domain names that are obviously based on trademarks, but the question arises from the apparent notion that a "trademark" is some kind of special status beyond "a mark used to distinctively identify the goods or services of one source from another in a relevant marketplace." As long as folks think a trademark is "some kind of government certificate registered in a database somewhere", then the point will continue to be missed.
This also points up the sort of thing I mean when I talk about "all of the relevant facts". While the UDRP doesn't have a mechanism for compelling the production of data from third parties, if we are talking about potential litigation in, say, the United States, then there are ways of getting that data. What data? Well...
If a trademark owner files a lawsuit over a domain name you have at GoDaddy, for example, then one of the first things that trademark owner is going to do is to issue a subpoena to GoDaddy to obtain a list of
ALL domain names registered to the same account, a list of GoDaddy accounts using the same email address or other contact information, a list of domain names registered to all of those accounts, and a list of all domain names that have ever been registered to any of those accounts. That's going to provide some important context.
As applied here, someone could say, as I did above, "But 'marca' is just a dictionary word and the domain name could be used for things other than sports news in Spain!" That's certainly true, but when the subpoena responses come back, and let's suppose that these are the only three names in the account, then the
entire context more strongly supports the inference that the registrant was collecting domain names suggestive of trademarks, and not dictionary words.
