Few days ago i received a email. below is the full copy. now to explain a little further. i bought this domain for my little brother (his name is oscar) he currently isnt using the domain and he nor me is making any money out of it. but just to be safe i deleteded the domain. now what do you think is this real and why are they doing this?
You did not need to delete the name as you describe a legal, non-infringing use of the name. So long as your site was going to have nothing to do with the movie award you would be fine and could use the name all you want for your little brother. However, even if your brother is named Oscar, he and you could not use that domain name for anything related to the movie award. browntwn
If you had a parked page with movie/Oscar ads then it is an infringing use. If your site had nothing to do with movies then it would be OK.
Keep it - tell them the truth - if it's a name your untouchable see nissan.com the person is called Nissan, been sued by the company many times and always won.
Tell them to take a hike. That's no more than a BS form letter trying to scare you. If you are uncomfortable telling them to take a hike, shoot me a PM and I'll buy it. My name is Oscar as well.
It's indeed real if you search around in Google. And they're doing that in order to protect their trademark rights, which is every mark holder's responsibility. Unfortunately that's exactly what the domain name showed as of this post. I gather that's what got their attention. Honestly I find the OP's reason rather hard to believe, however understanding. I won't be surprised if the Oscar folks feel the same way, especially with what the domain name's shown. To the OP: don't take this as legal advice as it isn't, but talk to them if you're really intent on using that domain for your brother. With luck, they'll be polite and kind enough to let you continue using it. However, expect the worst anyway. Also unfortunately, they don't even have to believe your story, but who knows? Hope it works out.
thanks for all the replies on this subject. i deleted the doamin so its to late to recover it. well atleast im sure im not getting sued. thanks for explaining all this.
Yes, I am confused about this one too? I thought domains once registered couldn't physically be deleted until the registration period was over apart from sending it to no name servers.
There are tons of oscars trademarked. I don't have time to weed through them all but you can qualify what they are saying by going here http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4006:vf6nvu.1.1 click basic search, type in oscar, and start reading the ones that are not obviously something different. hope that helps, Nigel
You didn't have to delete it. I would have sent an email back stating that my brothers name is Oscar and to go take a leap. You really missed a great opportunity to tell a big entity to go "F" themselves, and be right....I would have really enjoyed that
The company I work for ($500 million/yr company) sends these letters out all the time, it's just a scare tactic. We'd never put the time and effort into taking people to court - too expensive and too much time involved.
Maybe coming form your company, they are a scare tactic, but just because your company is lame doesn't mean every company acts the same. There are many companies that send these letters and do follow up on them.
1st, when you registered the domain, it was registered as personal right? Not as business registration? So you are safe there. 2nd, you are not hosting anything related to oscar nor that you claim any rights or imposing as one, so again, you are safe. 3rd, you will need to look at their trademark papers as what exactly they insured/trademark. Some company will just trademark the name preventing others using it "in relation" to them. I would just keep the domain. But don't held me liable for this.
I'm sure you would. But at the OP's possible expense given the domain name is arguably infringing Oscar's mark, inspite of the OP's reason for registering it in the first place? Indeed. The OP ought to contact Go Daddy about that. I can't seem to attach the image, so I just zipped it and put it here instead.