I recently sold a website called Anifriends.com a few months back which was a social community, prior to launching that site I had another site called Anidate which was also a social community but I closed Anidate and relaunched as Anifriends months later, now I would like to Relaunch AniDate as a social community based around the same concept however I am wondering if the new owner of Anifriends could take legal action against me if I launch a new site under a similar name since anifriends and Anidate sound alike, also I should mention when I launched Anifriends the members from that site were moved over from Anidate to Anifriends, since launching Anifriends however the site now has over 15k members while the original Anidate only had around 3k, so would it be safe to relaunch Anidate using the same old database or should I abandon the Database and start fresh, and also will the name be any legal issue. The way I see it is the word Ani isn't copywritten by him so technically I should be able to legally relaunch using Anidate.
When you sold the site did you do any contract about not ever (or for certain amount of time) doing a similar site. If not, you are free to start a new site but you will have to start afresh and can not use the old database. Since there is no copyright on Ani you should be able to relaunch but make sure to not copy them and steal their user base, you may just get sued. You should check with a lawyer.
I signed no contract agreeing not to create a similar site or anything like that. Thanks for you advice, I will relaunch the site fresh.
When you sold the site you really dont own the database anymore, so you wont be able to use it. But unless there was a non compete agreement there is no reason you cant start another similar site.