Domains with trademark names in them?

[mojoman67]

I've been reading several posts on what constitutes a trademark or not (and if you are infringing), but what if your site has the trademark name as part of the domain name? If I wanted to run a site about Microsoft's Visual Basic language and named it VBExperts.com, is there an infringement here? Everyone in the I.T. biz knows what VB stands for.

My current site is a perfect example. I simply want to describe and report on the new Intel technology for home theaters - Viiv. I also have a few other sites, such as ViivProgramming and ViivServiceProviders that redirect to the main site hoping to catch some type in traffic.

What is the consensus on the legality of these domains?

 

[allinone]

I believe anything with a trademarked name in it is illegal. Hence i own officialdell.com (what a waste) and that is illegal.

 

[weblord]

have you seen this before?
http://www.icann.org/udrp/#sutop

 

[Dave_Z]

What is the consensus on the legality of these domains?

What consensus? :D

 

[sm]

it's on a case per case basis. vbexperts.tld would perhaps not be a TM violation..... in any case, if you're going to build a website with such names, make sure that you at least put a disclaimer clearly stating that your site is in no way endorsed by the tm holder. that's the very least that you should do....