Hi About a year ago myself and two friends got together to set up an online community (non profit). Friend 1 came up with the title and set up oursitename.ning.com (Ning.com is website where you can create social networks). I purchased www.oursitename.com and forwarded it to oursitename.ning.com. Because i had the skills i put the work into oursitename.ning.com and i also set up oursitenameRadio.com. 6 months ago i gave the domain to Friend 2 because i didnt want anything to do with it anymore. Friend 2 then set up another ning site at oursitenameRadio.ning.com. This pissed Friend 1 off and they both got in a row because it was 'splitting the group'. Friend 1 then wrote up a copyright notice and sent it to Friend 2 saying he's using his intellectual property/site name title. Does Friend 1 really have copyright over the phrase oursitename? From my understanding of it is that to copyright something you have to actually put some work into it? Is just the idea/thinking of the title sufficient enough to copyright it? im just trying to get some understanding incase Friend 1 pulls this on me by claiming the oursitename.com domain that i purchased is his because he's going around calling himself the 'founder' of the site.
This has nothing to do with copyrights. A trademark is established by usage, not an idea or "intent to use". If there was usage, the domain could have acquired common law trademark rights, but giving a domain without transfer of goodwill would certainly bring ownership into question. Merely pointing a domain to another does not give it trademark rights. Depending on the name and usage, there may be no trademark rights. This is something where the exact facts need to be examined by an intellectual property rights attorney. If this isn't some hugely successful site (and it doesn't seem like it is) then I wouldn't even do anything about it. This is the type of dispute where running up legal bills of tens of thousands of dollars would be very easy and the party who wins would still be out those legal fees. Neither side is going to be able to do anything to force the other party to cease use without spending a lot of money.
while I agree with Mjewel's excellent analysis in general, I'm not entirely sure about that point. For example, rightmove.com points to rightmove.co.uk, and the word 'rightmove' is very strongly trademarked. While it's not the act of forwarding that has established this trademark, it certainly hasn't damaged the main mark in any way shape or form that I can see.
The difference is that they were not just changing the tld (which would be infringement), but forwarding a second level domain to a subdomain that they don't own. This makes it a third-level domain and I don't think there is any case law on infringement with a third level domain. There was a case with google on a blogspot third level domain several years but it never went to court. I don't know if there is case law on the reverse, but I would guess it would make a much harder argument for common law rights or likelihood of confusion (the domain also isn't exact) - assuming the second level domain was never marketed, rather just forwarded. This is why an IP attorney needs to be consulted to take a look at the entire picture. Trademarks rights don't go to party "A" just because they had prior usage to party "B" - Party "A" need to have been the very first to use, and continue to use in commerce, not merely ahead of party "B". The only thing that is a given, is that legal enforcement is going to very, very expensive.