The Never Ending Illegal Activity on Forums
As I am slowly working my way back into the domain industry, I have been visiting a lot of forums and looking for some interesting investments as I am selling my latest venture that’s been keeping me occupied for the past couple of months (link). Especially on the Digital Point forums, I couldn’t believe the illegal activity going on there in regards to potential cybersquatting as well as trademark infringement.
I saw many threads advertising typo domain names of athletes, companies, along with other branded & trademarked names. The seller attempting to make money off of a trademarked name, is illegal in it of itself. People may challenge me on this point, but if you are telling users that this is a typo domain name for some big, branded company, you are making money off that company’s name. It’s a classic intellectual property case. And even if it’s a close call to an intellectual property, it’s a classic big guy chasing after the small guy case (who probably can’t afford a decent attorney).
While that bothered me, it bothered me even more to see smart, reputable domainers, buying these types of domain names. Unless you are making a legitimate fan website out of the domain name, I don’t see what else you could do with it, other than to wait for an offer to come your way for it. I just find it to be a real grey hat area. You can’t legally make profit other this other company’s name, or a name that could be confusingly similar.
Any comments?
You bring up a very good point, but you need to consider that on the DP forums, there are a lot of foreigners, who don’t necessarily follow US laws like you are implying.
I decided to stop posting on some domain forums like NamePros and DNForum b/c there are too many people, many which are new, trading trademark domains. I don’t want to be a part of a board like this which turns a blind eye to every trademark being sold, and also make it on the list of all the lawyers starting to troll those boards.
The domain forums prefer to not police their boards, which is understandable to some degree, but when they become 100% complacent and the problem is growing unabated, then it is not right anymore to not do anything. They could help stomp out this TM crap, but they are doing NOTHING!
It’s time for DNForum and NamePros to stand up to trademark domain traders and stop this crap!
Totally agree, we’ve been squandering over TM’s for the past few years and for many of us the money’s been rolling in nicely, good times – am I right, Unfortunately, the powers that bee are closing in.
“The internet is becoming and oversised claim for land, it’s an identity crisis far beyond any quack could imagine!”
BTW: I clicked out of the comments form and lost all the content, you may want to sort that out – probably why you don’t get many replies!
What is equally disturbing are the businesses that facilitate the sale of trademarked domains. For example, Bido recently had the domain WellsFargo.cn up for auction (currently WELLSFARGOREFINANCING.COM and WELLSFARGOMORTGAGECORPORATION.COM are listed on Bido). How did that pass their screeners? Bido is apparently willing to sacrifice its reputation for an 8% commission on $28 (assuming anyone would be stupid enough to pay even the minimum Bido price).
I was scammed hard by people selling domain names they didnt own, claiming to be a broker.
I have hundreds of dollars in dispute with paypal. One scammer goes by Envohost, who claimed to be selling me Micronet.com for a fire sale of $125, claiming that the company Micronet was going out of business.
Verifyid needs to be implimented into forums. I appreciate the large discounts usually compared to Sedo auctions, but there needs to be a way to make everything more stable.
I agree when its obvious. There is also the problem of the people who run forums and domain hosting companies and computer programs guessing and placing bunk possible trademark violation links to things that are not.
I recently bought up a bunch of names, pre-checked them, no trademarks, no copyrights, no one using the name. A computer program placed a link possible trademark violation, google indexed it. The link was removed a day or two later, but now its in google in the top the results. In that case my product name just got damaged by a computer program, the untrue link about Trademark still shows up.
In another case I placed the name of a drug, not licensed or trademarked by a company for sale. It is one of the most common drugs and without checking someone posted I think that’s trademarked. I then pointed to wikipedia and other link sources to show it was not trademarked. But, damage done, again someone trying to protect a trademark that’s not theirs, creating a negative link.
I also bought a few hundred names in one shot for a customer, one of them had a name combined in it that could be considered a trademark issue. The owner of the trademark notified us, we dropped the name. That is the proper procedure if you find you have a name with a trademark.
There are may examples where people think it is trademarked and it is not. Nike for example is a greek word, depending on how you use it. Nike shoes does not own greek words. Generic words can not be owned.
Example: Pot.com, if you buy Pot.net and don’t mention Pot.com you can sell the exact same type of product. Pot.com has no standing on a generic word. They can on the exact words “Pot.com”, but .”net” makes the other domain different.
I also run and have taken websites back for celebrities. If its a straight fan site it is hard to legally make one without infringement.
If you post any advertisements, you sell anything related to that celebrity you have violated the use and the domain rules and it can be taken by the celebrity in a hearing.
You also can not post images of the celebrity without the photographers permission if it is copyrighted. What a boring website with no photos.
And in the end if the celebrity is big enough your little lawyer will love you as you will pay him to accomplish nothing. The big law firm will win if you use the name in conjunction with the actual celebrity name to profit.
Regarding Smart Domainers:
No such thing. I don’t believe in self-proclaimed smart domainers. You can learn how to buy and sell, avoid scams, and make interesting, eye-chatching posts, but beyond that, there is nothing else to learn.
Some people talk about making good investments, finding the new hot domain, but i completely disagree. Demand in this market is based on pure speculation. Sure, domains like Business.com work, but things like OnlineBusiness.com and people expect $xx,xxx, I think that’s ridiculous. People are smart enough these days to be able to type in longer addresses and more specified ones. Things like, AsmroOnline.com, work just as well for an online business.
In addition to speculation, people create huge attention to 4 letters domains and new extensions and tlds. In the end, not everyone cares a whole lot about the domain name market.
Just my rough opinion. But good article