NTLK
Established Member
- Impact
- 68
I try to stay far away from trademarked domains, but as many others I seem to have fallen in the trap as well.
Short background. My registrar is running a 1 euro promotion for .eu domains. I'm not a big fan of .eu, but since there have been some decent sales in .eu lately I figured to give it try. I registered around 20 expired domains that might have some potential. But I didn't do a whole lot of research on the domains. Mistake.
One the domains seemed to be a nice brandable one, consisting of a short generic keyword (sgk) + store.eu. Let's call it sgkstore.eu. While I was researching I found a Brazilian company and an Asian company with the same name. Figured it might be interesting to them if they ever expand into Europe. The sgkstore.com version is listed for sale at 150K. So .eu version might have some value as well.
When doing some more research I found another company that has the .it extension with the same name. Only after that I started looking in the trademark register. Too late, I know.
The interesting part is that the Brazilian company that I mentioned before, applied for a US trademark. But they didn't get/abandoned it. However they also applied for a European trademark for 'sgkstore'. Which is pending, but it has been opposed by another company that's owns a trademark for 'sgkshop'. And the outcome isn't clear yet.
Interestingly, sgkshop.eu is still available for purchase as well. So right now I'm wondering what to do with this domain. Should I delete it to prevend any possible issues or should I hold on to it and wait for the outcome of the opposed trademark. Which also could have an effect on the domain name if the opposing party wins.
Short background. My registrar is running a 1 euro promotion for .eu domains. I'm not a big fan of .eu, but since there have been some decent sales in .eu lately I figured to give it try. I registered around 20 expired domains that might have some potential. But I didn't do a whole lot of research on the domains. Mistake.
One the domains seemed to be a nice brandable one, consisting of a short generic keyword (sgk) + store.eu. Let's call it sgkstore.eu. While I was researching I found a Brazilian company and an Asian company with the same name. Figured it might be interesting to them if they ever expand into Europe. The sgkstore.com version is listed for sale at 150K. So .eu version might have some value as well.
When doing some more research I found another company that has the .it extension with the same name. Only after that I started looking in the trademark register. Too late, I know.
The interesting part is that the Brazilian company that I mentioned before, applied for a US trademark. But they didn't get/abandoned it. However they also applied for a European trademark for 'sgkstore'. Which is pending, but it has been opposed by another company that's owns a trademark for 'sgkshop'. And the outcome isn't clear yet.
Interestingly, sgkshop.eu is still available for purchase as well. So right now I'm wondering what to do with this domain. Should I delete it to prevend any possible issues or should I hold on to it and wait for the outcome of the opposed trademark. Which also could have an effect on the domain name if the opposing party wins.
