Trademarking a DN

[cgjackson2001]

Hi,

Just a quick question how would you trademark a DN, like take my site for instance discuss.ws, now if someone made a free forum site with the DN discuss.TLD (any other TLD apart from .ws) would i be able to take legal action.

Chris

 

[JYM]

well i was under the assumption you have to own discuss.com and all those TLDs, or that another site with discuss.TLD doesn't have a trade mark....

 

[DNQuest.com]

Well, that is kind of a tricky quesiton. Using your example, you could try to TM your DN, but it wouldn't mean too much since the TM would only apply to "discuss.ws". The other TLDs could be registered and ther isn't too much you could do about it unless they copy your site. "discuss" is a genereic term and so not a TM (unless it becomes familiar with a certain product or service IE- windows, apple).

TMs are acquired through commerce, you can't buy one and say you have a TM (you may register your TM, but you still need to establish the TM before the governement will grant approval of registration). So your company would be the TM (ie- discuss.ws, inc.) and not the domain. So if you are able to TM your DN due to the commeerce you established, only your site name with TLD would be the tradmark.

In your example, there isn't much you can do about the other TLDs. Additionally, .com would have the preference if there is a battle of DNs since it is likely to have been registered first (and you could be accused of reverse highjacking). There is no requirement to own all the TLDs or ccTLDs in order to be a TM.

It is a tuff question and hard to completely explain, but I hope you get the jist of it.

 

[stscac]

Yahoo has applied for the trademark "Y.com" and University Magazine, "U.com"

-Steve