Advice regarding trademark names and domains

[Nova]

Can a company sue you or take your domain for abbreviation plus date?

example:
Coca Cola may use cc2012.com to redirect to their main site.

Would I be allowed to buy cc2013.com? if they didn't own it yet?

 

[Rob_F]

CocoColla2013 – No, you couldn't/shouldn't use that in a domain - that would be obvious infringement.

cc2013 possibly, depending what you did with it – as cc could stand for many different things.

- Rob

 

[Nova]

Thats what I meant cc2013.com and not CocaCola2013. By the way CocaCola is just an example.

I have purchased, example: xx2103.com and upon checking a famous company owns example: xx2012.com which they redirect to their main site but they don't own the following consecutive years.

Surely they cant argue they own copyright to two letters plus a date? as you say almost anything can be abbreviated to two letters.

I should also add I don't plan to do anything with it yet and I don't plan on doing anything relating to the company. I bought it thinking I might use it for a business sales page, if my company was going to be xx. So I could have xx2013 etc for the latest sales or news from that year but now I have chosen a different name to use. Could I just park it? or simply put for sale on it?

 

[Rob_F]

Almost always comes down to use in these instances. If you try and sell one of their/their competitors products/services via the site – you'd be asking for trouble. Parking it could be risky, but again it would depend on how that parking page is optimised and what ads are being displayed.

If you develop a site about county cricket/credit cards, etc, you'd likely have no problems.

Worth mentioning that abbreviation followed by date domains rarely sell for good money, and their shelf-life is very limited. I wouldn't bother with them myself.

- Rob

 

[Nova]

Okay thanks Rob. I'll hang onto it anyway and might offer to sell it to the company for their use next year.

 

[Rob_F]

Okay thanks Rob. I'll hang onto it anyway and might offer to sell it to the company for their use next year.

That would be a bad idea – let them come to you.

- Rob

 

[Nova]

Okay thanks for the advice Rob. I very much appreciate it, I don't want to do anything wrong/ethically wrong.

 

[tifosi]

Okay thanks for the advice Rob. I very much appreciate it, I don't want to do anything wrong/ethically wrong.

For many people just the process of registering the domain in that way with the obvious intent to sell it to the company is ethically wrong.

If you registered it to develop, fine, to sell to a particular company, big grey area!

S

 

[Nova]

Okay thanks. I did buy it to develop, I checked 2012 date it was taken, so I checked the following dates and they are all available. I was going to buy them all up until 2020 but just bought 2013 date. Later I went back to the 2012 date and found out how to check whois, seeing it was taken by a famous company and reading past posts on this forum led me to ask the question.

 

[sdsinc]

It's a waste of money. These domains are time sensitive. Shelf life = 1 year.
Fortunately you bought only one.

Companies register and promote time sensitive domains from time to time, that doesn't mean they are going to repeat the same thing year after year. Or that they will want to buy from you.

 

[RolandN]

I think you must be careful while doing this,this can be called Cybersquatting and according to wikipedia, it is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.