So I aquired a web domain, and I was wondering what the heck to do with it. Its called camelcrushbold.com , camel is trademarked, but not those words together. 1.Would it be illegal to try and sell the site to anyone, or to sell it to camel especially? 2.If so could I legally just park the website with ads or something to make me money? 3.Should I be carefull of content I put on the site if I wanted to park it (may be misconstrued that I am trying to force camel to buy it if I say it sucks or put a porn tube on it or something lol )? 4. What the heck should I do witht his domain? I wasted money buying it and putting it on flippa, which btw I might have to take down lol. No one wants it Im assuming because of the questions raised here.
I would recommend you talk to a lawyer, only they could answer it without a shadow of a doubt. If you purchased it within the last 5 days most domain registrars will let you cancel the registration within that timeframe. The reason I suggest a lawyer is because it really depends on the trademark registered, likeness to the trademark, location where the trademark has been registered (i.e. country and your location that country or another). I ran into this same issue once *waves hi to Wiley Publishing* (of the "for dummies" series). Didn't realise I had caused an issue and believe me a lot cheaper just to let it go and lose your $10 bucks. Stuart
Im trying to contact lawyers currently and If I dont get an answer soon ( within 3 days ) Ill get rid of the domain. It just makes me mad because I also put it unto flippa which charged me another 19$ I know its not much but still makes me a bit angry.
I definitely know the feeling, I registered the domain supportfordummies.com just thinking hey it will be a fun place to put some how to stuff up. I got sent a threatening legal email from Wiley Publishing basically a cease and desist... Which I of course did immediately (there was nothing up on the site). However all this while I was away on holidays LOL. I really do wish they would give the little guy the benefit of the doubt and just say "Hey, you have done wrong please don't" rather than instant threats. LOL I obviously let the domain expire. Stuart
Wow, that makes it pretty clear to me that my site may experience some problems. Out of curiousity man, how do you determine the cpc value of a domain and other stuff before I buy it? To make flipping domains a bit easier, I bought another domain called beer-bottle.com the keyword beer-bottle gets 201,000 searches per month and that is about all that I know about it. Godaddy says it is worth up to 64$ on the secondary market but idk...
To be honest that I am not sure haha personally I am really against cyber squatting (as when I have a legitimate idea that I want to put into a website it drives me bananas that someone just has it sitting there with ads and wants to charge $3500 to sell it to me)... for reference that has happened twice recently. But I digress, while it drives me up the wall I know it can be very profitable and why people do it, alas I really cant give you any advice on that as I would have no idea. Cheers Stuart
Aw lol, hmmm maybe I should shorten the listing to one day and see if I can get rid of it for 30 bucks or something, before any legal issues arrise? I mean a cease and desist order would really hurt me right? IDK lol... But I guess that is another question of morality, I mean giving a website with an illegal name to someone else... I think Ill just take it down.
That might put you in for more legal trouble than it is worth also... like I said I am no lawyer but I would suggest cut your losses and learn from the experience. Otherwise you might just end up a whole lot worse off for wear. Good luck in whatever you decide Stuart
Ok thanks for the advice Ive decided to just take my site down and get off of flippa, its probably the best decision.
Moving forward: 1. The so-called illegal part is selling a domain bearing its trademark to make money off of that. It's easier to demonstrate that if selling it to its trademark holder. 2. You could, but that could be taken against you if those ads displayed products/services of the mark holder's competitors. 3. Absolutely. Domains bearing common words nonetheless used as trademarks are somewhat easier to get by. The word delta is used by an airline, a faucets maker and a bike manufacturer, yet all are different enough to prevent confusion (hint) from occurring with one another. It's when using what I call unique, famous marks like Google, Facebook, etc. is where it gets practically difficult. The more unique and/or famous the mark, the harder it'll be to use the domain bearing their mark namesake for anything else other than them unless it's maybe non-commercial.
It depends what you, or the person you intend to do with the domain, if you can wash your hands clean and sell it, at a break even point or loss I think it would be much smarter then trying to start a site, get threats/lawsuits because tobacco company's have endless supplies of cash, I wouldn't dare to mess with them. I just really believe you would have legal problems because you have there trademark in there, and not only that but there brand name which I believe is also trademarked since you couldn't sell or market this in any other way except for what would be considered illegal and if you gained profit that would make it even more illegal. Just run far away from it, if you can just take a loss and let it expire or put up a site to show how cigarette's give cancer!
It's not just a trademark for "Camel" - you could have a site called "MyPicturesOfCamels.com" and be fine. But you have an exact product name - yes, you would be sued.
I would guess they will only threaten you if they feel threatened by you. There is the fear that you could take misguided visitors and sell them a similar product, which is completely reasonable. If the phrase is copyrighted then request a refund or let it expire. Otherwise you should be free to do as you wish. It is absurd to me that people reserve specific phrases in the first place. Did you know that even the "happy birthday to you" song your parents sang to you as a child is copyrighted? Even restaurants have to create there own little jangle for the birthday tune, or risk being sued. How is that for stupid!