I've owned a domain name "halo3planet.com" for close to two years now, and right after a pagerank update (PR 5 on some pages), I've been sent a legal notice from another LARGE party. The party has websites that use the word "Planet" in their domains. Since both my domain, and the parties publish video-game related content, they claim that I have stolen their trademark. I honestly did not intend to appear like them at all (the format of the sites look nothing alike). I've offered to include a message at the top of the sites stating that we are Not them, as well as include a link to their website, and am waiting for a response. My question here is, did I do anything wrong? I mean, in the "Halo" universe, there are concepts of space, planets, galaxies, etc... planet seems like a pretty common word to me. There are many, many websites with planet in the domain that I was able to find that they do not own. They seem to have targeted me right after a PR update =(
There is no trademark registered for Halo3planet. They cannot own every game name combination that has planet in it.
Ok, thanks for your advice IPonIt. I was thinking the same thing... That's an awful lot of trademarks that they would inherently own. Does anyone else have thoughts about this? I have to go visit my attorney soon.
Why don't you do that other than ask for feedback from total strangers in an online forum who know little to nothing of the facts of your situation, more so if you feel you can't reveal everything anyway? However, make sure you talk to an attorney who deals with domain-trademark infringement disputes, not one who handles divorce cases.
If people have had experience in the past, there's no harm in hearing what they have to say. That's why I posted in the "Legal Issues" forum. Putting that aside, I am seeing an attorney about this soon, and I'll try to post what I find out.
You are right up to an extent , here you can get advice and most of all you will be able to deal with that website as well. Now as far as I know or I am concerned you should go to your attorney and discuss the case with them and try to have a talk via your attorney to the web sites attorney as well