What a day… Today evening at around 6:30 PM I received an express delivery from FedEx. Was wondering what it would be and when I looked at the cover it said “Arent Foxâ€. I was like wondering who this was, and address located that the delivery came all way through Washington DC. I have never received any mail from Washington DC before and being the first time, I was little curious to know what was there inside the envelope. Guess.. What I would have found? Three long documents from AOL LLC (“AOLâ€) with the Subject line “Re: Infringing Domain and Web Site: AOLUNCUT.COM†Complete Details: Click Here I want DP Members to guide me on how to proceed any further, if its a suggestion, advice or anything, just post a reply here and if you are interested in knowing more, you can contact me via PM. I have the scanned copy of the documents and was wondering if I could post thet here ? I hope that won't be a poblem at all. And also guide me how to move any further, its only based on your sugesstions that I recieve from you. Cheers, Dreamchaser
they are domainchasers! i think is better you release the domains if you dont want to have a big long legal war
The first thing i would find out is if Arent Fox represent AOL... I have aoluncuts.com...but i didn't get any thing yet...
If you're based in a country where the word "AOL" is a trademark, then you'd better hand over the domain. If you're not, then tell them to get lost.
Didn't you figure when you registered a trademarked name that it could be trouble? Just give it back and save yourself the grief!!! Ed
Hm....See basically I searched for the domain.. since it wa availbale I took it. AOLUNCUT.COM does'nt mean we have to think its aol uncut, it can even be aolun ut or any other key combinations. David has asked me put the site down - OK! I can do he has asked me not use any of AOL terms (which are trademark) and thats the reason he is asking me to delete them. Also he says, people might think I am affiliated, endorsed with AOL, but did he not check the footer of the website ? What do you exactly suggest.. ? Delete the contents and be safe or even provide them the domain ? Cheers, Dreamchaser
Nope, I am not from the US, but he clearly states that they have Tradrmarks and Copyright in my country either in the name of AOL. Cheers, Dreamchaser
It doesn't matter what you've put in the footer of the site, you're still using their trademarks without permission. I don't understand why people don't get this, you can't use other people's copyrighted material or trademarks without permission and expect to get away with it simply by acknowledging the owner or stating that you're not affiliated with them. You might think you're following the rules by adding that footer but AOL still has the right to stop you using their trademark if they want to. That's a very foolish assumption to make - AOL will have trademarks in more countries than the US (for example they have one in the UK as well).
Man there seems to be everybody on this forum, but I would definately give the domain up. Legal issues suck unless the domain makes enough to cover legal fees
It doesn't matter how much the domain makes - if AOL took the site owner to court and won they could recover at least some of the profits made from the running of the site. Attempting to get enough money from someone else's intellectual property to cover any possible legal fees is extremely foolhardy.
Give it up. If AOL pursue you through the courts then you are going to spend many unhappy years trying to defend a domain you have no right to use. Let's face it, if the company, AOL, did not exist, would you have registered the domain, aoluncut.com? Highly unlikely. So you are effectively trading on the AOL trademark.
You won't win against AOL. Offer to sell it to them for $1000. They will save this in legal fees and probably accept.
am with mad4 - see if you can get a bit more out of them than just the fees - they even took aimster theregister.co.uk/2001/05/21/aol_wins_rights_to_aimster/ and that dosnt have aol in the url
I like the ideal of selling the domain to them however don't suggest it let them make an offer or this may show that you registered the domain in bad faith, I remember reading something about that here a while ago.
i dont know about AOL, but seems like they may be bigger or the same big as Google, and I have see sooooo many domains with "adsense" in it, and i have never heard any single case Google sue someone with that domain, and every site just put some acknowledging at their footer that they have no connection at all with the respective owner, and they are fine until now, seems like 3 years adsense has been running, as i remembered from my fat brain, imo, it's a good promotion for AOL itself, just dont know how they think really.