How To Stay Out Of Trouble Of Trademarked Domains
Even though your choice of domain is brilliant, it may not be so neat from a legal perspective. If your domain name conflict with other company’s trademark, you may receive Cease-and-Desist (C&D) letter from trademark holder or company to stop using the domain. And your all money and sweat you have spent to develop it will go in vain. So, please stay out of trademarked domains.
Before I show you how to stay out of trouble of trademarked domains, I suggest you to check following sources to understand trademark and trademark related problems in depth-
a) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGyJx_9iSO4
b) Huge list of frequently asked questions (and answers) about trademark
http://www.chillingeffects.org/trademark/faq.cgi
Are you a bit nervous to know all those things about trademark? There is nothing to be scared at all. Just try to follow following steps before you register your domains:
Step 1:
The best trademark search system is Google itself. Just go to Google.com and search with your desired domain name that you are considering to register. If you find bunch of pages related to your domain related keywords, this is fine indication that there might have trademark to your desired domain already. So, start with Google.
Step 2:
The second most important place to go for checking potential conflicts is the trademark database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office at http://www.uspto.gov.
To check for registered trademarks in the United States, follow following steps:
i) Go to http://www.uspto.gov
ii) Now click on the Trademarks link from top navigation bar.
iii) Then click on Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS)
iv) Click New User Form Search (Basic).
v) Ok. Now type keywords from your planned domain name in the Search box and click Submit Query. Bingo!!! It will let you know whether there are any trademarks (dead or alive) for your given term.
vi) Repeat above process for all of your domains you want to register.
Step 3:
Check also other Countries’ databases for potential trademark conflicts:
European Union : http://oami.europa.eu
China: http://www.chinatrademarkdatabase.com
Japan: http://www.jpo.go.jp/quick_e/index_search.htm
Australia:http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/atmoss/Falcon.Search_Screen?p_search_no=0&p_SearchLevel=BASIC
UK: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-text/
Canada:http://www.ic.gc.ca/app/opic-cipo/trdmrks/srch/tmSrch.do?lang=eng
So, that’s all about how to stay out of trouble of trademarked domain names .
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