Generic Name - UK/US

dav111 · Jun 25, 2012

A company in the US has a generic name and domain name.
Similar to: greenapples.com or classiccars.com or petinsuranceservices.com

What are the legalities involved in buying a .co.uk domain that happens to be the same name

The US company does operate in the UK but just uses its .com domain.

Would there be issues in trying to sell the .co.uk domain to the US company?

Many thanks

namealot · Jun 25, 2012

Depends whom registered first , If they have a trademark? How long they have been trading, if you’re trading etc. Just how “generic” the words are you register after them they have a Mark and you try and sell to them more than likely you’d get a surprise….I’d say the way you’re explaining it you’d get nothing but a headache bad faith etc

doodlebug · Jun 25, 2012

If you had apple.co.uk and made a site about apples or maybe even have a car dealership called Apple cars ltd and make a site about cars then fine, only if you made a site about computers that you would get into trouble, generic words are fine as long as you don't relate your site to a company's products that trade using the generic term.

carl77 · Jun 29, 2012

What makes you think the company would be remotely interested in buying the .co.uk
If they were that interested, they would have registered it long before you got it and trading quite happily without it. This is because generally US companies only want to trade from a com url. Most are not even interested in acquiring the .us address their own country code.
Of course .co.uk has worked out much better for us, maybe as we are an island too as it pinpoints our exact location, which is why there seems to be a big demand for co uk names. But they are only in demand in the uk market end users.