Will you check the TM database before you contact a potential buyer?

[owntype]

I have many domains that have received several offers, one of them in mid $x,xxx range.

As I have checked on GOOGLE, there are thousands of companies and organizations call this name. The domain contains two generic words. I also checked the TM site of US, U.K, Canada, and found lots of corps has registered this name as TM...

I am going to contact some of the potential buyers based on the long list got from Google, but it is really annoying to compare them with those TM corps.

Have you ever suffered from this problem? and how you did?

Friend told me just ignore the TM issue, send the letter directly to those corps, and since the domain is generic, won't bring any problem. Is this true?

Please share your opinions, thank you

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Why is it that "Friends" have recently been giving such bad advice?

"Ignore" tm's at your own peril, and a lack of a uspto.gov (TESS) registered mark does not mean "safe" either.

Do some of your own reading - and remember that ignorance <usually> isn't an excuse in the law

-Allan :gl:

 

[cache]

don't contact them if it is potentially TM.

 

[owntype]

Thank you Allan and cache!

This makes my decision clearly.

 

[kubativity]

related question

Obviously you can not register something like microsoft or yahoo. But if there is something more generic, say like "socialzone" or "horizon", and you feel you might have a TM issue, what measures could you take to avoid any issues?

 

[Ronald Regging]

Obviously you can not register something like microsoft or yahoo. But if there is something more generic, say like "socialzone" or "horizon", and you feel you might have a TM issue, what measures could you take to avoid any issues?

Dont solicit sales from TM holders...

 

[owntype]

Dont solicit sales from TM holders...

E.g. I have a domain "GoodLuck.COM" since 2004 and there is a company has a TM "Good Luck" since 2003, but they only have "GoodLuckBanking.COM".

In this situation, can I email them?

OR, their TM regged later than my domain, can I?

More details needed, thank you.

 

[Name Trader]

I don't think it's really a good policy to solicit corps with trademarks on your domain name. You never really know how they might react. Certainly trying to solicit from them is probably in bad faith so you might well lose a wipo action from them, even though I think there was a recent case where a generic name was held in favor of the domain owner. You basically don't want to risk it. It gets worse if they pursue you thru the courts rather than with a wipo action. You can go bankrupt very fast.