Received this from Amazon. What would you do? Dear Sir or Madam My name is David .... and I represent the intellectual property group for Amazon.com, Inc. One of my jobs is protecting the valuable brand that we have created in the mark Amazon.com. We've spent millions of dollars building the Amazon.com brand to a point where it is recognized throughout the world. Protecting this brand is not an easy task and one that we take very seriously. One aspect of our brand protection program is that we actively pursue all people who infringe or dilute the value of our trademarks. This e-mail may therefore come as no surprise to you. It has come to our attention that you have registered the name AMAZON......INFO as a domain name for a website used in a manner that implies an association between your website and Amazon.com. We believe your registration and use of the AMAZON....INFO domain violates a number of laws that protect trademark owners, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and Federal Trademark Dilution Act. And while we rarely have to resort to pursuing remedies under these laws, we have and will in order to prevent further misuse of our brand. Rather than resorting to legal processes, however, we would like to offer you an opportunity to quickly settle this matter. We will consider the matter resolved if you agree to transfer ownership of the domain to Amazon.com and to take the necessary steps to complete the transfer. If you complete the transfer in a timely fashion and agree to not register any domains containing Amazon's trademarks or misspellings in the future, we will reimburse you for the amount that the registrar initially charged you to register the domain. Please respond to this e-mail by 25 October 2007 to indicate whether you would like to settle this matter in accordance with the above offer. If you agree to the transfer, we will provide you appropriate instructions about how to complete the transfer. If we do not hear from you by this date, we will take those further steps that we believe are necessary to protect our rights. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Sincerely, David...... Amazon Hostmaster
Depending on how valuable this domain is to you, I would wait for the registered letter to come through by registered post. Thats what they mean by "we will take those further steps that we believe are necessary to protect our rights" In order to take action against you to get your domain they will have to file a WIPO action against you which costs a couple of grand at least and you will have to be legally informed about the action against you. When it gets to that, just hand the domain over. They will always try it the cheap way by sending you a scary email in the hope you will cave in and just hand over the domain. (surprisingly in many cases it work!) Sometimes, just becasue a company "says" that it has the legal right over a domain or phrase, does not mean its true. I had a huge real estate company here in Spain try to intimidate me by sending ruffians over to my office telling me I could "dissapear overnight" if I dont hand the domain name over. I was kacking my pants at the time but after speaking to my lawyer who did a trademark search in Spain for their company name name it appeared they had not even registered it. (these guys turn over 100 million plus per year so go figure). Yeah, ok, Amazon is not your little real estate company but the possibility that its got a trademark class on the phrase "AMAZON" in your country is pretty high, so maybe not a great idea to mess about with them.....but only take it seriously when you get a registered letter from their lawyers.....emails mean nothing. If the domain is valuable enough to keep then its worth spending a couple of hundred bucks doing a trademark search IN YOUR COUNTRY, if not just give it to them.
You obviously intended to spouge off amazon.com name PLUS false advertise... http://www.amazon.info/Advertising/b/002-6734661-5269624?ie=UTF8&node=276241011 You should delete the website and transfer the domain to them. Only an idiot would register a brand domain and then copy their website.
I bought the domain with a site for $20 a couple of months ago, so no I didn't register it. Always thought it was a bit of a lousy name anyway so i was going to replace it with something more booky but never got around to it.When it was up for renewal I would have let it go. Get's my back up when the big boys get bullying though. I live in Oz so it's a long distance to chase me. Was just wondering what others thought.
ummm...amazon.info is actually owned by Amazon.com http://whois.webhosting.info/amazon.info This is why we have lawyers, because people simply assume they know everything. retroaugogo: I hope there is a green rep comain my way!
its a worry , for sure ... with these things the danger is always "damages" to their reputation .but its a long road as to wether , they would be entitled to anything ...although having big lawyers they may well try and bully you. I reckon theres nothing to stop you selling it on before any hassle relly starts ? is there ? i kninda guess they wouldnt bother chasing you for selling it on PAUL
I laid some green on you Craig. The guy obviously spends his time trawling the net for this stuff hence the reason I didn't put his full name and the full name of my site. It's hardly an alternative to Amazon.Just a twopenny affiliate site that I link to.
If you have an Amazon.com related web site and use the word Amazon in the name, you are screwed. Just give it up and migrate to another domain name. If your site focuses on something entirely different than Amazon.com, such as the Amazon rainforest, you may have an argument to keep the name. "It has come to our attention that you have registered the name AMAZON......INFO as a domain name for a website used in a manner that implies an association between your website and Amazon.com." Sounds like the first scenario applies. You can fight them, but you will lose. If they take it to ICANN, the name will be theirs.
Distance isn't a factor - they can reach you through WIPO and can instruct the registrar to take control of the domain during the dispute.
In case you haven't read, Microsoft has already filed suit against some people whose domain names infringe their trademarks without sending C&Ds. Others are starting to follow suit, even though it's a costly venture with little to no monetary gains that they can make up for through their commercial success. Trademark holders don't have to file UDRPs to resolve that if they then decide to sue in court. And neither are they required to even send C&Ds in the first place, even though doing that can possibly solve the problem without going to court or UDRP.