Start investing in digital
'real estate'!
Trademarked domain names have been in the sight of many money-seekers in the past. The idea of owning a domain name, which could have been used by large organizations, was thought to bring in large amounts of money when sold to these organizations. These ideas were floating castles.
If you find the domain names, googleforums.com, adsenseincome.com, yahoosearchengine.com, etc. interesting, note that you might be bordering the possibility of ending up in court and being sued by these organizations. Even worse, you will lose all your money and time invested in building websites associated with these domain names.
Our advice, before proceeding with this section, is to forget and stay well
clear of trademarked domains. Also note, that these domains have no resell value
as no experienced domainer will invest in them, in fact, none will take it free
from you!
If you do end up registering and utilizing a trademarked domain, you will
usually receive a letter from an attorney of the infringed organization with a
Cease and Desist order. In most cases you will be requested to close your
website and also to transfer the domain name to the company involved. In most
cases, these organizations might offer to repay your registration expenses of
the domain name at most. In some instances, you will not be offered any
compensation and you will lose all your invested funds and be responsible for
expenses of the transfer of the domain.
Should you ignore this the next step to follow will be the infringed party’s
attorneys contacting your hosting provider, who will with immediate effect close
your website. You will in this event lose all your funds invested in hosting
fees. Furthermore you are likely to receive a subpoena to appear in a civil
court and held responsible for various expenses and losses incurred by the
infringed party.
Should you decide to defend the matter and go to court you will incur further
expenses by appointing legal representation to present your case. Should your
defence fail and you lose the case, you will in addition to the infringed
party’s claim, be held responsible for all court costs as well as the legal
representation costs incurred upon the infringed party. You might suddenly be
responsible for costs exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions,
lose the domain name and your hosting account.
Unless the domain name is guaranteed to generate these funds prior to losing it,
I suggest that you do not consider this route.
Tools for Looking up Trademarks
Australian Trademark Database Search
http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/
Canadian Trademark Database Search
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/cipo/trademarks/search/tmSearch.do
UK Trademark Database Search
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-text.htm
US Trademark Database Search
http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm
French Trademark Database Search
