Beware of Domain Name Trademark Infringement!

Most webmasters have at some point in time registered a domain name that contained a trademark. Sometimes, it may be completely unintentional or it may be for legitimate use while other times it is deliberate and people just decide to roll the dice with it. Regardless of the intent, domain name trademark infringement is a serious issue that all webmasters need to be aware of.

First of all, there are completely legitimate uses for using someone else’s trademark in your domain name. A non-commercial site is protected in just about all instances, but it has to be strictly non-commercial. A site consisting of a review, critique or commentary of the trademark holder is a fair use of a trademark as long as there is no commercial intent. What makes a website commercial? Well, basically if there is anything on the site that earns revenue then the site is considered commercial and use of the trademark would be considered infringement. Even a Google AdSense block could make your site commercial because you would be earning revenue from it.

I have personal experience with domain name trademark infringement and had one of my sites taken down by Hostgator. I registered discounttoolzone.com and had a BANS site on it for a few months before I converted it to a WP Review Site. Just after relaunching the site, I received an email from Hostgator that my site had been taken down due to trademark infringement. It turned out that a small company named Tool Zone had complained to Hostgator and requested them to take action, which they promptly did. I had done a trademark search at the US Patent and Trademark Office for “discount tool zone” and got no results so I thought I was safe. I never even thought of just searching for the phrase “tool zone”. Personally, I still question whether their trademark actually covered my name too but I decided it just wasn’t worth fighting for and moved the site to a new domain which happened to be a phrase that got quite a good number of searches and had little competition. I was ranking at number three for that phrase within two weeks so I feel like I made some lemonade out of life’s lemons.

The moral of the story is to always be aware of domain name trademark issues when searching for a domain to register. Do a trademark search at the US PTO and make sure your domain name is clear of any infringement. Is it really worth putting all the hours necessary to create a valuable site only to have it removed down the road when a company’s lawyers come calling? I don’t think so.