Domain Name Trademarks
As
your Internet business grows, the value of your domain name increases. The issue
of a domain name trademark should move to the top of your list. You need to guard
against unscrupulous competitors that may try to incorporate your domain name
in their meta tags to obtain search engine rankings under your name. If you have
a domain name trademark, you can go after these individuals and compel the search
engines to remove their listings.
What Is A Trademark?
A
trademark is a distinctive item that is used to identify a logo, product, device,
package or service. The trademark identifies the item as being provided by a particular
firm. To protect these items you can obtain a mark from the patent and trademark
office that prohibits others from trying to gain economic advantage from your
mark.
Domain Name
The patent and trademark office views domain names
in a unique way. The office views the “http://www” element as a part of the file
transfer process, not your domain name. The “.com”, “.net”, etc., designations
are considered top-level domain identifiers and are also disregarded for the purpose
of a domain name trademark. For example, our domain name is http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com.
If we submitted the domain name for registration, only the “sandiegobusinesslawfirm”
portion would be considered for a mark.
Locators Cannot Be Registered
A
domain name is a locator for file pages. When you type in your domain name, a
server locates and displays files. If a domain is used solely for this purpose,
it will not be granted a mark. Instead, the domain name must be incorporated into
the site. For instance, Amazon is recognized as an online bookstore and the site
actually has the word “Amazon” on every page. Since "Amazon.com" is more than
a locator, Amazon can apply for and receive a trademark. If Amazon used the domain
name, bookstore.com, the company would be able to register “Amazon”, but not “bookstore.”
Generic
and Descriptive Terms
Domain names that are generic or descriptive in nature
cannot be registered because they fail to designate a distinctive product or service.
For example, “sandiegobusinesslawfirm” is comprised of generic terms and describes
who and where we are, to wit, a San Diego business law firm. This domain name
cannot be trademarked. The same result would occur with bank.com, book.com, advice.com,
etc.
You may be thinking, “What about ‘Coke?’ "Coke" is a trademarked term
because it is a distinctive term for a soft drink product. It just so happens
that a brilliant marketing plan has convinced most people to refer to soft drinks
as “cokes”, even if they actually prefer another brand!
Trademarks are an
important factor in protecting your Internet business. Armed with a trademark,
you can keep competitors from pulling traffic off the search engines when people
search for your site.
Source: Free
Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard
A. Chapo is with
SanDiegoBusinessLawFirm.com
- This article is for information purposes only. Nothing in this article is intended
to address the reader’s specific situation nor does it create an attorney-client
relationship.
