SueGoogle.com $150

Really? LOL, all this time I thought Google was the number "1" followed by a hundred "0"'s

 

Dedicate the site to a puppet named Sue. A puppet made out of yarn and a sock with big plastic google eyes glued to the top. It's a kid's site! That Googly Sue has the wackiest adventures.

That or a porn site. You're choice.

 

That's some good thinking there. LOL
I'm sure you own some similar sites. Out with it now!

 

Um.... no comment.

 

Why has sites like paypalsucks.com and paypalwarning.com never been shut down by paypal then, even though they would very much like them to be.

There are both well advertised and out there, isnt this the same with this domain name.

 

Yeah ok suegoogle wow that is kinda asking the big guys to kick you in the @#%!!
I have a couple of "interesting" "brand" domains if anyone is interested in buying these types of things send me a pm, I am letting them go cheap!!

 

Omg.....Pass the pipe man.....

 

One can have list of people whom Google will sue on this site.
Or is it the other way round?

 

I read an article discussing whether a domain name resembles the trademark and you make an awesome point, but if I could only dig up that article..

Anyway, it said that websites like PayPalSucks.com are clearly and obviously not owned by PayPal and visitors immediately know that this is about people who hate PayPal.
However in Google's case it's different because Google has actually launched a program called "Google Checkout" and that domain name is probably violating the trademark on that I guess, not too sure...

 

that adsense site has

maybe if they trademarked it to start off with, they would be in some hefty money.. lol

 

You should have included a link, I had no idea what you were talking about

Anyway I made a wild guess and here is the link "adsense.com":
http://www.adsense.com/

Maybe they should sue Google over it Google sure has sued a ton of people for using their name before!

But you're right, they should have trademarked it

 

The US recognizes common law trademarks, so they would have had trademark rights established IF they were the first to use it. This isn't an issue of them not having a Federal Registration, but having a trademark doesn't give you exclusive ownership rights to use a name. Apple computers has a trademark on "Apple" (and so do others) but they can't prevent others from using it if it doesn't conflict with their business.

I don't know the specifics of this case, but it doesn't appear they were in the business of selling contextual advertising and it could be that google isn't infringing upon their usage (as it was before google). If they had a good legal claim, there would have been a hundred intellectual property rights attorney's who would have jumped to take the case and get millions from google for infringement. I'm sure google did a lot of research before deciding to use that name to limit their risk.

You also need to prove you were the first to use it and your damages. I'm not sure what the damages would have been IF they had trademark rights - and it doesn't appear that they did.

I also took a look at the USPTO, and it appears another company trademarked "adsense" back in 1982 - which is 13 years before adsense.com claims they were in business. It also appears that google purchased the trademark from the people who had prior rights (and a Federal Trademark). It would appear that the owners of adsense.com were infringing upon the trademark of another company, the rights of which google acquired. It could be that they are now using another domain to prevent from getting sued by google.

Owning a domain does not give you legal rights to use it if it is infringing upon another prior trademark usage. Google might not be able to take the domain as long as they do not use it in a manner that conflicts with their usage. I'm sure they would like to have google pay them a hefty sum for the domain, but perhaps google isn't interested. From the USPTO records, it was the owners of adsense.com who didn't check for prior usage before they registered the domain. They are wrong in thinking that you can register a domain for someone elses trademark and then seek payment from them. You are responsible for checking for ANY prior usage of a name - even a mom & pop business that operates out of the garage with no phone number listed. This is why prior usage searches run hundreds of dollars and up and still are no guarantee.

I have several Federal Trademarks that are uncontestable, but I missed registering the 4 letter word by a few months and as much as I would like the .com, I can't do anything about it because it isn't being used in a way that would conflict or harm my business.

There are over 40 different trademark classifications, so in theory, you could have 40 different trademark holders for the same word - each having rights to a specific usage.

 

Really? That's new...But in the AdSense case, isn't the website doing a similar service to what Google AdSense is doing?