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Domain Name TrademarksAs your Internet business grows, the value of your domain name increases. The issue of a domain name trademark should move to the top of your list. You need to guard against unscrupulous competitors that may try to incorporate your domain name in their meta tags to obtain search engine rankings under your name. If you have a domain name trademark, you can go after these individuals and compel the search engines to remove their listings. What Is A Trademark? A trademark is a distinctive item that is used to identify a logo, domain name, product, device, package or service. The trademark identifies the item as being provided by a particular firm. To protect these items you can obtain a mark from the patent and trademark office that prohibits others from trying to gain economic advantage from your mark. Domain Name The patent and trademark office views domain names in a unique way. The office views the “http://www” element as a part of the file transfer process, not your domain name. The “.com”, “.net”, etc., designations are considered top-level domain identifiers and are also disregarded for the purpose of a domain name trademark. As a result, only the “sandiegobusinesslawfirm” section of our domain name would be considered if submitted for registration as a mark. Locators Cannot Be Registered A domain name is a locator for file pages on the Internet. When you type in sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com, a server is locating and displaying files. If your domain is used solely for this purpose, you will not be granted a mark. Instead, the domain name must be incorporated into your service or product. For instance, Amazon is recognized as an online bookstore and the site actually has the word “Amazon” on every page. In such an instance, Amazon can apply for and receive a trademark. If Amazon used the domain name, bookstore.com, the company would be able to register “Amazon”, but not “bookstore.” Generic and Descriptive Terms Domain names that are generic or descriptive in nature cannot be registered because they fail to designate a distinctive product or service. Consider our domain name, “sandiegobusinesslawfirm” is comprised of generic terms and describes who we are, to wit, a San Diego business law firm. This domain name cannot be trademarked. The same result would occur with bank.com, book.com, advice.com, etc. You may be thinking, “What about ‘Coke?’ Coke is a trademarked term because it is a distinctive term for a soft drink product. It just so happens that a brilliant marketing plan has convinced most people to refer to soft drinks as “cokes”, even if they actually prefer another brand! Trademarks are an important factor in protecting your domain name. Armed with a trademark, you can keep competitors from pulling traffic off the search engines when people search for your name.
*************************** The above discussion is intended to be a general commentary on legal issues. Each situation is different and this article is not intended as legal advice for your specific situation. Further, nothing in this article is intended to create an attorney-client relationship. If you have additional questions, please contact me. |
