Advice on domain name?

I am thinking of purchasing a domain which corresponds to a brand used by a competitor in the industry.

So let say Company X produces Black Widow product.

I want to buy the domain blackwidow.com

Reason: I am not ripping off the competitor's product. While we are in the same industry, the name of his product suits the theme of my product line eg. Halloween. So I am using his product name as my company name.

Questions:
1) Can I get into any trouble for this? Trademark / copyright etc? Note that the product name is a generic term that can be found in the dictionary - I just used black widow as an example.
2) From an SEO perspective, is this adviseable? Since when I key black widow into google, my competitor's products show up on all first-page SERPS.

If I were you i'd come up with a completely different name.
Could you get in trouble? You could, especially when they're in the same industry.
Better safe than sorry in terms of playing with competitors.

1. Yes you will

2. The moment your website starts to show up, your competitor will know you. And from there onwards its all about how they react.

In worst case , yes they could sue you

Try using a different name, something related, why get into trouble at first.

Look at it this way. Say the apple.com domain was available. Could you get in trouble for selling computers on apple.com? I mean apple is a generic word in the dictionary.

Yes, you'll get in trouble.

Will the company come after you? That's a different question.
If they have all the copyrights, trademarks, and registrations in place, they most certainly can.

virtualman89 said:

Look at it this way. Say the apple.com domain was available. Could you get in trouble for selling computers on apple.com? I mean apple is a generic word in the dictionary.

Yes, you'll get in trouble.

Will the company come after you? That's a different question.
If they have all the copyrights, trademarks, and registrations in place, they most certainly can.

Click to expand...

This is a very good perspective and explanation, if the product is totally legit and everything they might be able to sue you, but if not they won't but the decision is up to you if you risk it or just go with the safes option

Thanks guys, will go on the hunt for a different domain then!