question-answered Is it legal and safe, trademark wise, to buy a domain like nicaraguajournal.com?

[CadenzaNames]

Is it legal and safe, trademark-wise, to buy a domain like nicaraguajournal.com? How can I find out for sure? Also, if a name like that was available and it had over 50,000 dofollow backlinks, what would it's approximate worth be?

 

[jberryhill]

a domain like nicaraguajournal.com?

I don't know what is a domain name "like" NicaraguaJournal.com. Nicaragua is a place. Wall Street is also a place.

Is WallStreetJournal "like" NicaraguaJournal? Both of them have (place)("journal"). One of them is a spectacularly famous trademark and the other one, insofar as a Google search indicates, does not seem to be.

How can I find out for sure?

Certainty is an elusive thing.

If I wanted to know if "Nicaragua Journal" was a well-known trademark, then I would do a Google search for "Nicaragua Journal", like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q="nicaragua+journal"

It seems to pull up a book title, and various other things referring to Nicaragua and Journal. Looking over the first dozen or so Google results, it does not appear to be strongly associated with any one party.

If it was strongly associated with one party, then we would drill down further on how well-known such an entity might be, how long they may have been at it (due to descriptiveness/inherent distinctiveness issues), whether they have registered a mark and when and where, whether they have had any applications filed and refused, what if any other users of the term there might be.

At that point, we might have an initial handle on whether they have a mark.