Domain Names: Violating Federal Law for Fun and Profit.
Sooner or later you might get the bright idea that what you should really do is buy a lot of really cool exact match keyword domains in advance. You could buy the name, and then just hold onto it -- in fact what you could do is just buy the name and put lots of ads on the empty site that people might click on. Or maybe there's a person or business that hasn't bought up their own domains. Hey, what you could do is, you could buy them, hold onto them, and then sell them to whoever wants to claim them farther on down the line for a profit.
Or! You could buy domains that are typos of well-known names such as Micorsft.com or apell.com, and use it to sell apple or microsoft products for your own immense gain.
These are great ideas.
They are also illegal ideas.
Thanks to a number of high profile cases throughout the past ten years, all of these things are considered trademark infringement and they are a violation of *federal civil law* -- in other words you could get into big, big trouble for doing it.
You can of course own as many domain names as you like as long as you have a provable personal or business interest in it. So something like buydiscountresistancebands.com is perfectly fine. However, say you like Cindy Crawford ALOT. You notice Cindy does not own her domain name and what you decide to do is make a "tribute" site to Cindy, selling photos and videoes and whatever else is out there about or having to do with Cindy.
No. You can't do this -- UNLESS YOUR NAME IS ALSO CINDY CRAWFORD. And you put up pictures of *yourself*.
Otherwise it's trademark infringement, because Cindy has first dibs on any proceeds she might acquire from her name or image.
Follow me?
You also can't buy typos. Well, actually you can buy typos but if I were you I would be careful. People have gotten into terrible trouble for doing this, especially if they were buying typos reminiscent of very very very big names. There is a man who literally can not re-enter the United States because of how very seriously Microsoft took his practice of redirecting all typos to businesses he could profit from personally.
Just be careful with this, There still people out there who will suggest "domain-flipping" as a reasomable strategy, and the fact is it used to be. It still can be but just remember -- if you can't prove to the FTC that you have a legitimate potential reason to hold that name over someone else who might need or want it, best to leave that one on the table.
Join FREE & Launch Your Business!
Exclusive Bonus - Offer Ends at Midnight Today
00
Hours
:
00
Minutes
:
00
Seconds
2,000 AI Credits Worth $10 USD
Build a Logo + Website That Attracts Customers
400 Credits
Discover Hot Niches with AI Market Research
100 Credits
Create SEO Content That Ranks & Converts
800 Credits
Find Affiliate Offers Up to $500/Sale
10 Credits
Access a Community of 2.9M+ Members
Recent Comments
22
Hey Chiefless, Good post as an AM for NAMoffers I see this kind of thing all the time. I've had someone claiming to be statefarm Ins,TD bank, Bodybuilding .com and many other well known brands, of course I check it out, First the tel, then the IP address and email, then google map the address, If any of this doesn't check out they get deleted and their application is denied for our CPA network. So, great work on bringing this up.
so if i have a mycoolsite.com but all the times i am promoting and providing some reviews to apple computer. its illegal?
No, jespinola, you can only get in trouble for using a domain name that someone can prove is infringing on their business. Selling apple stuff is fine but you can't have a domain name called "applecomputers" I'm not sure about applecomputerreviews. Maybe you could do that but I'm just staying away from trademarks in domain names period,
If I wanted to violate the law, what I'd do is use a free site I didn't own, use a different computer, and spam the FTP content every time I had my website banned or removed. Just build something you actually own though, and be sure to save everything you write on Word as well as have backups of your FTP content. The way government is now dully noted by there efforts with the SOPA act, they'll ban all websites composed of the letters sex, because it gives meaning to having sex, an innapropriate action to underage minors.
Hey Chieftess,
You are so right on target with this post. I have a personal experience with a domain that I purchased called farmville-secrets-unleashed.com. It was suggested by a "guru" that said I could capitalize on the success of this popular Facebook game by selling a secrets guide (through ClickBank). But the domain name contained the word Farmville which is trademarked by a company called Zynga.
Luckily, all I got was a cease and desist email from a company that Zynga hired to look for stuff like this. But you never know when these large companies will want to make an example of people (think back to the days of downloading "free" music - how many kids got huge fines for doing so).
Corporations have a lot of control of our government so even seemingly no brainer ideas like misspellings (which shouldn't be illegal) are going to get you into court. And the courts will probably side with the corporations (can you say Crony Capitalism?). You may even be found not guilty of wrongdoing but you're going to be paying a serious amount of money in attorney fees. Lawyers at big companies know this and will stop at nothing to make that point.
The takeaway is you really need to be careful as Chieftess suggests. If you are lucky like me, you'll only get a cease and desist. If you're not, prepare to lay out some serious cash!
In case anyone is wondering, I deleted that domain name from my GoDaddy account as soon as I got that cease and desist email!
To be honest I don't agree with the government here.I agree, I don't think typos should be illegal and I don't see why even Farmville wouldn't want you to use Farmville in your domain -- if you were selling Farmville. But there was a massive ruckus over this, big companies and legislators and here we are.
I just ran across someone *still* selling a domain flipping strategy and I thought I would give a heads up. I got rid of about 20 domains 3 years ago -- none of them were trademark infringements but they were general enough that I could see that if the law really took off I could end up in a world of trouble one day.
One of the tests by the feds in trademark infringement is whether you seem to have a "pattern" of holding domains or domain parking. Twenty domains equaled somewhat of a pattern, and I wasn't so attached to that strategy that I was willing to end up in federal court over it.. Or over anything ever if I can help it.
See more comments
Join FREE & Launch Your Business!
Exclusive Bonus - Offer Ends at Midnight Today
00
Hours
:
00
Minutes
:
00
Seconds
2,000 AI Credits Worth $10 USD
Build a Logo + Website That Attracts Customers
400 Credits
Discover Hot Niches with AI Market Research
100 Credits
Create SEO Content That Ranks & Converts
800 Credits
Find Affiliate Offers Up to $500/Sale
10 Credits
Access a Community of 2.9M+ Members
Your humorous, tongue-in-cheek title is a perfect example of what an attention-grabbing title should be. Once I read the title, I HAD to read the article. Good job! Oh, by the way, the article was great as well. :-)