Owning a trademark domain? Can they touch me?

I recently purchased a domain from someone and now I realize it belonged to some choir group that is part of a university. The domain name is the name of this group. Is there anything they can do about this if their group name is trade marked or whatever?

I'm not going to try to use their name to make money in anyway. I had completely different plans for the site. What should I do? It seems like it would be fucked up if they could let their domain expire and then take me to court to get it back because it's their trade mark. Doesn't that show they don't value this domain/trade mark very much?

The answer is drumroll........... No-unless you are going into the choir business or some such thing. That would be a conflict.

Or if its totally a rip like "The official Georgia Tek University.com website. But if its THAT specific who wants it.
Thanking me doesn't hurt even a little.

The site is http://ug*aacci*dentals.com/ with UG*A being University of Georgia and acci*dentals being the group name.

I had no idea what this site was when I bought it, etc. Now that I've bought it though I'm trying to decide if I should try to get a refund and give it back to the person or not worry about it.

ugaaccidentals can be anything. don't worry.

United Gold Auto Accidentals, lol.

Make an accident insurance site or an accident videos site. Anyway put something in the domain and let google spiders find some content. Enjoy the existing backlinks.

shadowpwner said:

ugaaccidentals can be anything. don't worry.

United Gold Auto Accidentals, lol.

Click to expand...

Would you mind editing that to ug*a a*ccidentals... I don't want them finding this thread obviously. Edit: Fuck it.

You have absolutely nothing to worry about.

The key issue is not that they own the name in an unrelated field because they do not own it in an unrelated field. As long as your acronym stands for something else and thats your story you should be ok. Ownership rights do not extend into unrelated areas. Make it up to stand for something else at the bottom of the page and sell v*agra on top.

If you think it is so specific its scary you could state a disclaimer that it is in no way officially associated with abcgroup but you have a public appreciation section for abcgroup elsewhere on the page while you do whatever you want with the rest of the site. It is not impersonating them, they are not harmed, and you are not technically making $ by impersonating them but I like option 1 above better. No official similarity and its slightly better for you.

There are other subtleties based on intended use and as lawyers like to say it all depends but the above is essentially accurate but it also does depend somewhat on your content.

[FONT=&quot] In a pinch the worst they would ever be likely to do is force the transfer of the domain out of your hands in time. Again not likely if it has a different use.[/FONT]