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discuss Unregistered Trademark vs Domain

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Hassanhayat

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What are the rights of an unregistered mark which is a generic term, and is descriptive of the goods and services which are provided in the relevant class the mark is applied for although it has been used by the business for a while now?

For example an insurance brokerage trading as ‘Mobile insurances Limited’ for over 50 years. The trading name is still unregistered. Will it be able to register the mark ‘Mobile Insurances Limited’ on the basis of acquired distinctiveness and goodwill even though the term is generic and descriptive of goods and services it provides?

Secondly, what rights does the owner of the domain address (mobileinsurance.com) has in this case as it’s a generic domain which holds a lot of value and is held for sale.
If the mark some how get registered the value of the generic domain will be hugely impacted because of potential infringement of the registered mark ‘Mobile Insurances Limited’

Any thoughts?
 
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a generic term, and is descriptive

In trademark law, nothing is "generic and descriptive". "Generic" and "descriptive" are two different things.

A truly generic term cannot be a trademark. You can sell onions for a million years. You will not acquire distinctiveness in the term "onion" for onions. It's just not happening. That's what "generic" terms are.

Descriptive terms, on the other hand, can acquire distinctiveness on the basis of longstanding, substantially exclusive use and public recognition. And by "substantially exclusive", I mean that some incidental, minor use of the phrase by others is tolerable.

So, let's say you start an airline in America. You decide to call your American airline "American Airlines". Well, yeah, that's certainly descriptive. But they've been at it since 1939. There is NOBODY who goes to an airport, is told to go to the "American Airlines" desk and says "Which one?"

Or, let's say you develop a soft drink. You flavor it with a cola nut, and you add coca leaf extract. You decide to name your soft drink after those two ingredients - coca and cola - and you call it Coca-Cola. Now, sure, if you had brewed "mint tea" and sold Mint Tea, you'd find out that a lot of people are out there doing that.

I actually had a guy contact me back around 2000 or so who was CONVINCED that he was going to get rich with his portfolio of Coca Cola domain names, and he wanted to hire me to invalidate Coca-Cola because it is a descriptive mark. I told him I wasn't interested, and he wouldn't leave me alone for months. He couldn't understand why I would want to do that for him on the proposition that he would pay me out of the fortune he was going to make with his domain names.

I will admit that the crazy people who want to pay me when they win their crazy case are, at least, thinking about what it is I do for a living. The ones who seem to think I exist to help them make money for free are the ones I really don't know what to do with.

If the mark some how get registered the value of the generic domain will be hugely impacted because of potential infringement of the registered mark ‘Mobile Insurances Limited’

I would like to congratulate you for asking a genuinely hypothetical question. Normally, with unregistered marks, I'd suggest having a look-see what Google thinks about distinctiveness. What's brilliant here is that "Mobile Insurances Limited" - searched in quotes - comes up with one actual organic Google result, and it is this thread.

But, let's say that there was a large "Mobile Insurances Limited" that's been around for a long time.

It's interesting you included the "limited" part, because there may be a distinction to be made between "mobile insurance" and "mobile insurances limited". In contrast to the result noted above, the phrase "mobile insurance", from where I sit, generates a wide spread of Google search results which appear to indicate that while, sure, someone has to be the first result, there is no one party which seems to predominate the most relevant results.

If there was a big difference in search results between "mobile insurance" being what it is, and if "mobile insurances limited" gave me, say, the first 20 results all referring to one company, then I'd want to do some more intensive investigation into whether that phrase is, or is not, generally recognized in the relevant market as a reference to that particular company.

And be careful with geographically descriptive ones. You might have a "motor speedway" almost anywhere. But if you were thinking of sinking money into a new one in Indianapolis and calling it the "Indianapolis Motor Speedway", then you might want to pay a few dollars to find out what I think about it.
 
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Would you happen to know if the names of professional athletes are trademarked? If for example, I acquired a domain name with a professional athletes name - and was not attempting to sell goods or services - would I be opening myself up to trademark infringement? What if I just wanted to create a fan page? Or would that be misappropriating their name/image, etc?
 
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