One of the things people say they hate about lawyers is along the lines of "You pay them hundreds of dollars for a piece of paper which says, 'it depends'."
The problem is that there are typically facts beyond the question which might lead to one answer or another.
Take something simple, like "Is it legal to kill another person?"
Now, most of the time, if someone asks you that question, you'd probably say "no" and move away from whomever is asking it.
But, of course, there are all kinds of situations where killing someone is legal or affirmatively defensible.
The context matters. If I see my neighbor heading out with a kitchen knife asking me that question is a very different question than if I see him in an army uniform heading off on a combat deployment.
For questions of this type, I typically take into account that this is Namepros, and that most of the questions here relate to the activity of registering domain names for resale. That involves making several contextual assumptions. But, for whatever reason, there are folks who seem to get upset if I don't state every contextual assumption, in the effort to provide at least some clarity beyond "it depends" for a presumed audience of folks who are primarily interested in registering and holding domain names for resale.
Mind you, I post here when I'm doing stuff like waiting for my tea water to boil or waiting for the oven to reach 425F before putting my bread in it. That means that I may not state every assumption, condition, exception, or special case. That also means that general answers here may not apply to your specific facts.
That said, I can remember how annoyed I was a few years ago when I had a bicycle accident, hit my elbow pretty hard, and had a pain on the outer side of my elbow for weeks after that. The pain would not go away, in fact it was getting worse and affecting my grip and arm strength and I figured I probably broke something in the crash. I went to the doctor who sent me to an orthopedic specialist.
Think about this for a minute. This orthopedic specialist has years of special training and experience and does nothing all day long for a living other than look at people who have some kind of ache, pain or injury. I sat down and started to tell him the story of how I hit my elbow and what kind of pain I had and he cut me off, looked me in the eye and said, "You have lateral epicondylitis or 'tennis elbow'. I want you to wear this brace, take two Motrin, twice a day, for two weeks, and then go to physical therapy."
I was kind of annoyed. He didn't want to take an x-ray, he didn't want to do an MRI, he didn't want to do much of an examination, and he didn't want to listen to the rest of my story. He cut me off again and I realized that it was exactly like the sorts of situations where someone will come to me with a problem or question, go on for about 20 minutes about it, tell me what they think the answer is, and tell me what they think I should do, and I can hardly get a word in edgewise . Usually, I'll just turn off and wait to say, "Okay, how much do I owe you?"
The thing is, this guy sees older middle aged guys come in, rubbing their upper forearm, holding their hand a certain way, and feeling a sharp pain on the outside of their elbow probably two dozen times a week, if not more. Don't like his opinion? Go find someone else.
Now, can you find cases where someone was running a legit blog or commentary or some other situation in which they were making what is called "nominative use" of someone else's trademark? Sure. You can't call your business "Volkswagen" but if you are an auto mechanic, and you repair Volkswagen automobiles, then you can put on your sign "We repair Volkswagens".
But that is usually not the situation where someone comes along and says, "Is it okay to register a domain name with the word 'Volkswagen' in it?" In the context of this forum, no, it's not okay.
I happen to have a client whose initials are the same as a sports league. Can he keep his domain name? Sure.
But if I say, "no, there are dozens of cases involving league acronyms", some wise guy will come along and say, "What if my name is Neil Brian Abbot and I register 'NBA' as a personal site?" Well, sure, that's fine. That is why, for example, Japan Airlines lost the JAL.com domain dispute to a guy named John A. Letelier. Domainers regard Uzi Nissan as a legend for spending a huge amount of money time and effort keeping the domain name Nissan.com and never making a dime in return for it. Unless you happen to share a name with a famous trademark, then that situation is never going to apply or be useful to you. But, good for Uzi, he spent a lifetime and went to the great hereafter telling the car company to stuff it.
With that out of the way, I'm just going to drop this here:
...and ask what you think.
