Trademark and Copyright Your Domain Names!
Have you ever had the thought of loosing your hard work maybe after 10 years?
I was horrified this morning when I read an article online about TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHT OF DOMAINS. It scared me to numbness.
You do all it takes (and we are all familiar with the enormous efforts we put in our businesses-learning,practising, failing, rising up, failing again, getting up again, a little success, total failure all over again, sometimes you have to go back and rewrite all your posts...until your business becomes a $1M worth website), and then one fateful morning, after 10 years of hard labor online, you receive a notification from a newly created company, who went ahead and legally secured your domain name as a trademark, and has all the lawyers in the world making sure you transfer your hardwork over to the new company.
OK. Even writing this blog makes me extremely nervous because that is not something I will be able to handle.
The question now is,
''What do I do to secure the trademark for my domain name, before someone smarter than me does? Does WA have this covered?''
I think there is a serious loophole in legal proceedings, that encourage thieves to steal the hardwork of others, but in order to avoid getting caught up in this legal shortcomings, be one step ahead and
TRADEMARK AND COPYRIGHT YOUR DOMAIN NAMES.
Please if you know how to go about this, help out and leave your comment below, so I could secure mine right away.
UPDATES FROM CARSON
This is the message I received from Carson concerning the above mentioned topic. I hope it helps.
<<Regarding Trademark and Copyright - your website does not have any trademark term in it. The issue with some domain names is that they include names of companies that have world trademarks, like Apple, or Samsung for example. You can't hav a domain name like "Samsungphonereviews.com". That would violate copyright.>>
Recent Comments
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ok, this is team StunningBell responding to this post, As I was reading about picking a brandable domain name I ran across how owning your domain name vs. those companies offering free websites that they own your website too.
It appears they are related and deserves further investigation
.
I worked too hard for mines to be taken.
Thank you for this post!
More posts, please! ;)
Watch out WA, another valuable post from the golden one! lol
WOW. ''Team StunningBell''? Oh wow. I will make sure the next post is more valuable than this.
Thanks a lot for your encouraging comment Lee.
Best to be careful of trademark infringement in all cases. Because you have an online site it basically means you are trading the entire planet so any company that has been in existence prior to your domain setup could possibly have a case against you.
If you own the domain, meaning you paid for it and there is a record for your purchase and payment I wouldn't be to concerned.
If you are though I would suggest consulting a trademark and patent attorney.
Steve
Read this and see what you think...
http://riverdelfin.blogspot.com/2013/08/domain-name-law-is-it-possible-for.html
I don't have time to read it properly, but it seems to say that someone trying to take a domain has to go through a lengthy process and pay large sums of money to hijack a domain name owned by someone else.
I think it is a good idea for everyone on WA to do a search online of any possible company names that might sound similar to their domain name. That's where an affiliate marketer can run into problems - if their names sounds similar to a large company.
Just my take on it. I'd be interested in seeing other responses from people who are knowledgeable about this.
Thanks for sharing Wendy. As you rightly put it, ''if their names sound familiar to a large company''. These large companies will not hesitate to reclaim any domains out there that resemble their trademarks. Now I ask myself why they don't just buy all domains similar to their trade marks from domain registries, and just avoid future conflicts.
I've had this happen to me where a few images and some of my content was taken. It wasn't on a big scale as you mention here but it's still theft.
What you read sure is scary!
I agree with Karen and am interested to see the comments :)
Thanks for sharing!
You can read the conversation here. This happened to Mary, and she talked about it in the comments thread.
https://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2010/07/08/affiliates-domain-names-and-trademark-violations/
Thanks for stopping by.
It looks like Mary decided to drop the whole thing. If she had pursued it in court, she probably would have won - as there was no malicious intent to steal someone else's stuff.
But court is a big deal and I can see why she opted out.
I found this for marketers in the US:
https://www.uspto.gov/trademark
each country has their own page for this I guess. It certainly can't hurt to trademark a domain name. It's a pain, but probably worth insuring the cost of lost income in the future.
I would be interested in the answers to this one too. Thanks for asking.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
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As we are going to the new WA page by next week, maybe Kyle and Carson can help on this topic.Any website created by WA Premium member can be taken care of patent formalities by WA support team....maybe they can charge a fee for this service. Any comments, please.
Thanks, Gaurav for this reminder. I have included Carson's feedback on this.
Thank you so much, I had completely forgotten to update my post.