Kieron

I own the domain supermanthemovie.co.uk and received a letter from Warners lawyers the other day saying it was a trademark and I should hand it over etc.

What's everyones thoughts on this? Should I just hand it back?

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admin

Yes you should and just hope they dont pursue you for damages.

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aqls

I was hoping for a moment that they forgot the UK trademarks but:

http://webdb1.patent.gov.uk/RightSit...ohimnum=E38273

which covers quite a few categories.

I didn't look any further.

There may be some loopholes that only your specialist trademark lawyer might know of how to use the domain for e.g. wordgames! "man the super movie - rearrange to find a trademark infringing string of letters!" That sort of thing.

However, even if you did cleverly find a way round them sueing you, at whatever your lawyer costs, there still wouldn't be any way you could legally make any decent money out of it - as everything you do would be construed as attracting visitors by way of them thinking they were about to find something to do with the movie.

I am not sure how you would fare if you set it up as an independent review site of the movie, it would then be news related and you might be able to argue that it was an independent coverage of the world's opinions about the movie. (Don't ask me if that helps! It just rings a bell that there might be something there - I hope someone helps out on this!)

If it's an opinion you want - then for the sake of £5 I would ditch it maybe after having set up a simple page selling grass root bulbs or something just to have something lame to argue against them with in court if they decide to play silly buggers.

And if you want to take DC Comics on then you may as well take on Disney too - shaggydogthemovie.co.uk, Disney's about to released block buster, is also free to reg!

-aqls-

aqls

Looking further, I have just noticed that they have now covered all trademark classifications

http://webdb1.patent.gov.uk/RightSit...imnum=E2973675

The dates of this application
Filing date: 13.12.2002
Publication date: 08.09.2003

are subsequent to your initial registration of 17th September 2002

so as a bleach preparation manufacturer considering calling your new bleaches supermanthemovie cleans brighter, you do still have the edge in court . . .

You may be extraordinarily lucky, they may feel that it's not worth their while and just want to pay you for it - your risk!

Good luck.

-aqls-

Kieron

Thanks for the detailed reply aqls, much appreciated.

To be honest until recently I had forgotten that I even owned the domain as I bought it in 2002. I haven't got round to putting a site up so its no loss to transfer it.

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tifosi

offer to hand it back on condition you get a ticket to the UK premier... everyone wins.

FC Domains

I assume that you were planning to develop it as a fan site

Maybe they should have asked nicely. Now you want a reasonable fee for babysitting it for years.
This does rather depend on you not holding a heap of other tradmark domains.

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Colin
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zehrila

i guess every body should register a trademark along with a domain to keep your self secure. Just a funny thaught.

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