.mobi Trademark issues

[inetanywhere]

I've been doing trademark searches on the 3 letter .mobi domains I've registered and other ones reported here on namepros and it seems that a high percentage of them are trademarked. How do you know when it is ok to buy/sell one of these 3 letter domains and when it's not. I also looked on sites like Sedo and TDNAM and quite often the 3 letter domains are trademarked by someone, somewhere. Do those trademarks really hold up since there are so many meanings to most of these domains? I just don't want any problems from any Trademark holders since I plan on selling most of my 3 letter dotMobi's at some point. Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[JasMate]

You have brought up some good points there I too would like to know what people think about this...

 

[Broker]

I checked before I reg'd my one and only .mobi, it used to be TM'd but dead at time of register.

 

[yumi]

Maybe you don't know that's a trademark when you register it.
There'r 200+ countries in the world.
You can't check all trademarks.

 

[allnicksgone]

As long as you don't develop the domain into something close to what the tm holders are already doing, you should be ok.

 

[Traveler]

How can they get away with taking an LLL.mobi if you are using it for something other than what the have trademarked? There are multiple trademarks for many LLL names, so who has the right? Hopefully not the one with the deepest pockets :hehe:

Let's just say you were able to reg msn.mobi and made it look like msn.com, then you would be in trouble, but what if you used it as something like "mobile singles network". Seems like you would be fine. Am I wrong?

 

[inetanywhere]

What if I don't want to develop the domains, I just want to list them on Sedo or Afternic and sell them? Does that open me to more issues?

 

[erwin.groen]

The thing to remember is, if you show bad faith and I think this is the biggest cause of domains being transferred to trademark holders, like above if it resembles something close to that of trademarked names/letters, you're asking for trouble.

I n the interem, You might want to set up a site-free hosting somewhere using the letters using a different meaning to those letters ie CLR.mobi= color, it might also stand for= clear, mention this in the site for added protection!
IMO you should be fine, be careful when selling these names-letters down the track tho!!!.

 

[Traveler]

The thing to remember is, if you show bad faith and I think this is the biggest cause of domains being transferred to trademark holders, like above if it resembles something close to that of trademarked names/letters, you're asking for trouble.

I n the interem, You might want to set up a site-free hosting somewhere using the letters using a different meaning to those letters ie CLR.mobi= color, it might also stand for= clear, mention this in the site for added protection!
IMO you should be fine, be careful when selling these names-letters down the track tho!!!.

I've got most of mine parked for now, which is scary cuz someone might try and use that to say I only planned to resell the name. The reality for me is, I only have so much developement time and skill. I like to park my names, see which ones are getting the most traffic and develope them.