Trademark in Domain Name. What will happen?

HealeyV3

HealeyV3

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Take a BIG corporation, IE "Best Buy".

Now, think of a domain, for our instances, we'll use "BestBuyClearance.com"

If I purchase that domain, and build a site around it, what will happen?

Will I get a C&D? Will I get sued for Trademark Infringement? Will I have to transfer the domain to them?

I'm new to the whole Domain Name game, and was just curious what other people's experiences were using trademarked words in domain names.
 
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You will probably get shut down.
Maybe sued if you do anything very illegal.

But you can earn while it lasts and then run away.
 
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nothing unless they spot you and see you making off the back of them, likely you would have made money by then..so bank and move on...
 
If they find you, they'll send you a C&D and demand all of your earnings that you made from the domain name. If you can make some bank in a short amount of time, then do that and move on like delboy said, but don't get greedy. A major corporation like that has the money and attorneys to come after you.
 
BlueKing said:
You will probably get shut down.
Maybe sued if you do anything very illegal.

But you can earn while it lasts and then run away.
Click to expand...

based on what??? your gut feeling?

there are thousands if not millions of sites that are in breach of copyright etc.

m8, just keep under the radar :P
 
in the most cases your page will just get banned with a phone call from the company if they see that u are getting earnings thanks to them, but nothing more if there isn't much harm
 
i have two domains containing trademark but didn't face any prob yet and it is alive for more than five months. i have earned a lot with this two domain and still going. so don't stop, move forward and see what happen.
 
1. They could sue u for loss of earnings.. take your earnings from site, and sue u for a little bit more
2. They could (which i have recieved) threaten u with copyright infringment and other laws, basically relinquish ownership of said site and any other sites that u have of there trademark immediately or else..
3. Last but best for u spot u and applaud your seo skills and be quite content with the seo skills and marketing that you are doing for the company..

Most likely you are damaging the brand name they spent years trying to get so you,ll just be threatened to take it down.. No jazz just take it down and move on
 
Most likely the worst case scenario would be they either take the domain from you or make you shut it down. If you cooperate, I don't think it would go beyond that. In the meantime, you would be earning money from the domains, which you would continue doing until they find the site (they may never find the site, or may just not care if they do).
 
always use bullet proof domains (+hosting) make sure your methods of payment are anonymous too though

there are a few domain companies who dont give a crap, the type that host child porn, exploit kits and botnets.
 
Generally, trademark cases go like this:

Could a reasonable person be led to believe that your website is somehow associated with BestBuy after they visit it?

If yes, then you might have some issues. What constitutes a reasonable person's opinion? Just use common sense.

PayPalsucks.com has no trademark issues and has been around forever, eventhough they clearly use the trademarked name in
the domain. But nobody who visits that site would ever think for a second that it has anything to do with PayPal, and they are
not making money by leading people to believe they are associated with paypal.

There are exceptions, but this is the benchmark used in 98% of trademark disputes..
 
So my friend is recently involved in a trademark issue with his site where his 3 word domain name contains a trademark name for the first 2 words of the domain keyword. So he got a new domain without this trademark and moved his site over to this new domain.

Now is it Ok to blog about this trademark name product on the new domain with articles without any sort of issues? His site is just a wordpress blog with like 10 articles that talks about various topics and one topic is about this 2 word trademark name. Will the trademark company have any issues if you he doesn't have thier trademark in his url, but have pages..i.e. "domainnameDOTcom/tradermarkkw1-trademarkkw2-buying-options" where the title of the post is "Trademarkkw1 Trademarkkw2 Buying Options"?
 
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