Hi I'm looking at providing web solutions for my local area. I live near Dudley (http://www.dudley.gov.uk/) and have bought the domain www.dudleywebsolutions.com Is there any chance that Dudley Council will try to sue me for using the name "dudley" in my web adress. I am not trying to make people think im the official web designer for dudley etc however I will make use of SEO and say im local and talk about dudley and the surrounding areas.. Any opinionswould be a great help Thanks!
There are protected names in the UK for companies and trading names but these are at country/ national level (eg need Home Office approval to use the word British) but not for county or town/ city level
Thanks dude, what's your proffesion if you don't mind me asking! You seem very knowledgeable in this area.
I'm a project manager and business consultant. A former client owned a company which had British in it's title and found out about the challenges then See http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/gp1.shtml#appA
I am not familiar with UK laws, but reading that it deals with the naming of a company and I saw no reference in the entire document to domain names. You got me curious, do you know if there somewhere showing how this applies to domain names?
The attached deals directly with company names however trading names (which a domain name is) are very similiarly restricted.
I own a UK website for my town. I live in Keighley and own and have operated keighleyonline.co.uk since 2004, there are several other sites with the word Keighley in the URL owned by private individuals like me aswell as .gov sites. No one has ever said anything about it. They cannot I think own the town name otherwise no companies would be able to use it. You say Dudley is there anything like Dudley Plumbers Dudley Electrical Dudley Taxis Dudley Public Transport I take it you know what I mean.