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Avoid Trademark Infringement When You Choose a Domain Name
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Many domain names -- for instance, coffee.com, drugs.com and business.com -- are potentially powerful domain names, but they're generic. That is, they describe whole categories of products or services. Generic terms can never be trademarks.
Avoiding Trouble
The way to choose a domain name that satisfies your own marketing needs and doesn't get in the way of anybody else's trademark rights is to search as many existing trademarks as possible, spot possible conflicts and then pick a name that's unlikely to generate a nasty lawyer's letter.
The first place to go for possible conflicts is the trademark database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office at www.uspto.gov. Searching this database gives you all registered trademarks and all trademarks for which registration is pending. You should search not only for your proposed mark but also for other marks that are logically close, such as synonyms and variant spellings, such as barbeque and barbecue. In addition, you should also search the Internet at large and any business name registers, such as Thomas Register Online at www.thomasregister.com. (For more information about trademark searching, see Conducting a Trademark Search.
If your search turns up any names that are the same or similar to your proposed domain name, ask these questions:
- Will your website offer goods or services that compete with the goods or services being sold under the similar domain name?
- Will your website offer goods or services that typically are distributed in the same channels as the goods or services being sold under the similar domain name? This would be the case, for instance, if you plan to offer sports equipment on your website, and the owner of the possibly conflicting name sells sports clothing.
- Could your website divert business away from the site with the similar name? Is your domain name so similar to the other domain name that users might end up on your website by mistake?
- Is the other name well known?
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