Some of us have been in the domain industry since domain registrations opened to the public, while others of us are just beginning to invest in domain names. Over the years, or even months, often times, if you’re a good investor who owns a .com domain, the .net or .org will also be registered sometime after. At first thought when you have one of these names, you’ve got to be thinking, here’s my express ticket to making big bucks online. But if you’re a smart enough investor, you’ll know to take a good look at the legalities of the matter.

Welcome to the world of trademark infringement, where people can be sued left and right. Trademark infringement is one of the most common disputes amongst domain names that often result in the filing of a UDRP, or a related dispute resolution process. To sum up the definition of trademark infringement, it’s basically when you profit, or have intent to profit off of another person’s trademark. A trademark could be anything from a famous person’s name to the name of a toy or company.

Lets say you own a .com, that is registered by other companies in another extension such as .net or .org. Many people would think to just send an email to the company that owns your .com domain in another extension. But this is where you could get into some trouble. Although you most likely registered your .com domain name earlier than the person with your domain name in another extension, if they have a trademark for the name and you offer to sell your .com name to them, you’re still trying to profit off of their trademark.

Keep in mind that this can sort of go both ways. If you own a domain name with an extension other than a .com, and you offer it to the owner of the .com domain name, that’s still infringing on his trademark. And in this case it’s even clearer that you’re being even further intrusive on the .com owner’s trademark. The reason for this is because you most likely registered that .net domain name after the owner registered his .com domain name, therefore in this case, you’re coming into the picture afterwards rather than before. It just makes it that much more obvious that you had intent to profit of the owners trademark.

Now let me throw another situation at you that I recently came across. I picked up a domain name on the GoDaddy aftermarket, and I saw that the .com version of the domain name that I picked up was being used. I looked up if the owner of the .com domain had a trademark for it. Luckily, there were no trademarks pending, active, or inactive for the domain I picked up. But I did email the owner of the .com domain to ask for their permission to use the domain I purchased, just to avoid any disputes. One of my biggest beliefs is to do whatever you can to avoid being brought into the legal system as a defendant. And so some might call me crazy for emailing the owner of the .com domain, but nonetheless, I wanted to avoid a potential dispute. On top of that, another interesting twist to my situation was the .com owner was the old owner of this domain, and had let it drop. So, all of this added together equaled a potential dispute. I am happy to say that I received a response saying it was perfectly fine.

My main point here is that if you’re going to own a domain that is or could potentially be infringing upon another’s trademark, don’t email them saying you want to sell it. If anything, wait for them to come to you. I look forward to your comments and questions.