Should You Get a Domain Name With a Trademark In It?
Now you may have a number of views about lawyers (many along the lines of “Q: What do they call all the lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start”) but the fact is, they are paid to look after their clients, not you.
So letting me go on stupidly was a great move on their part to improve their chances of getting paid – after all, once I went live, I’d be motivated to sign up, but if I heard from them before, I might not even have written the software.
In fact, the whole story of MP3 has been one of this kind of calculation. I once watched an interview where one of the lead scientists involved said that they developed it specifically so it could be patented and licensed.
Of course, that’s usual for business. But when it was first became popular (mid-90s), it was because of all the freely-available source code, with no mention of patents, royalties, etc. So coders grabbed the code and started creating – and MP3 became the defacto standard for online audio because of them.
Once the format was popular, lawyers could then step in and collect – and they did. With earnings of $125 million in 2005 for the patent holder, Fraunhofer, and licensing per year of $10-20,000 per company (plus per-item licensing), it’s been quite profitable – and in large part due to the hard working (but naive business-wise) programmers who thought the source code to MP3 was ‘free’.
Enough history – why tell you all this?
Dave, I think I am qualified to comment on this one because I am a lawyer!
The point is that we are paid to protect our client’s interests and if that means enforcing their legal rights so be it. You would probably be surprised at how many times these rights are not enforced because the client takes a commercial/economic approach. However, there are some big name corporates that will enforce no matter how minor.
Remember, we don’t make the law (if only!) and we cannot (unfortunately) tell our clients want to do – we can only advise our client of its rights within the law and how to protect those rights and enforce their rights if they have been infringed.
Taking someone elses brand is against the law for a pretty simple reason – a brand/domain etc has goodwill attached to it just like any worthwhile business. When you use that name or part of it without consent you are stealing business from someone who has spent time building that name. Not only that, it can appear to the average visitor that the content is endorsed by the brand name – which may be the wrong impression that the brand wants to project.
There are lots more reasons but these are the main ones. The best thing to do rather than cybersquatting on someone elses hard work is to create something yourself.
Leanne
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