This is not legal advice as I am not an attorney. I do have a good business background though. But just for example, you or anyone else for that matter can produce and distribute a movie called Star Wars. What you cannot do is use any of the characters or other trademarks associated with the blockbuster movie of the same title. In general, words are not able to be copyrighted or trademarked, but ideas or products can be. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. For instance Kleenex is a word that was developed to represent a brand of facial tissue. Anybody can produce facial tissues but they dare not call them Kleenex. Anyway, that's my two, or maybe three, cents.
Hmm interesting to see that someone is using the myspace-layouts one even though I used it as an example. The one I wanted to register was for digg but it would be something like sites-i-dugg or such. Is "dugg" also a trademark or would that be OK?
Digg, Google and MySpace are copyrighted company brand names. They can easily sue you if you do something shady, but if you provide just an useful service (suck as MySpace templates), they have no reason to. As for the "sites-i-dugg", as long as it is not a social bookmarking site or something similar, I believe it would not be a problem...
Glad I could help. However, I am no legal expert or anything, so you better consult one before taking a risk.
actually you can trademark a name...matter of fact that is EXACTLY what you trademark, the name, the letters, the arrangement of letters, the colors, the art surrounding it etc so google-tips.com if it includes "google" and is releted to the Google search engine, and people might somehow think because it starts with "google" it is somehow related to or endorsed by google...then it would be a violation of intellectual property even if it wasn't expect google to go after you. case in point Adsense.com for MANY years...even BEFORE google started the "adsense" program...an advertising agency owned it. Many people mistakenly ended up on thier site. the "official" story is they got tired of all the inquiries not related to their firm...and that they may have "sold" it...rumors have it that Google presented a pretyy nasty lawyer letter inferring a long drawn out (read "expensive") court battle...anyway Now "google" owns it. World Wrestling Federation had to give up the initials "WWF" because the World WIldlife Fund felt people would get confused...now they are the WWE "world wrestling entertainment" there are many factors...but the short of it is....yes, the fact you are wondering lets you know its a possible trademark infringement remember Microsoft SUED Mike Rowe's Software company MikeRowSoft.com (he was 17 at the time of being sued)...also Mike Morris in Canada Got sued around the same time for MikeRoSoft.ca Paul Dell's Web Design Company Dellwebsites.com got sued by Dell Computers so don't think cuz your young, little or etc that they wont come after you. Especially in america, company's aggressively defend their brands that said, there are ways to make sure you do NOT infringe, and a couple exceptions that make it so they can't sue...but it still may cost you some to defend it.