Domain vs Trademark

I have a domain name that I have been using for several years, and unfortunately was not made awarethat I needed to also Register the trademark that we were using under the Spanish patent system.

A local individual has seen that we are a successful business and has registered our brand name
as a trademark. His lawyers are asking us to remove all publicity containing the name that we have been using for years.

Can he now force us to stop using that domain name ? Or do we have rights ?

 

You need to speak with an IP attorney in Spain. This is too serious to try to guess what to do and it likely will involve legal action. That said, the other party might just be looking for you to buy the trademark from them, but you want a lawyer to help you with that, too.

Here in the U.S., you would have to challenge the registration by the other company and if you could prove that you were using it first, you would likely win in court. But it would be a long and costly legal battle.

 

That is precisely what I have been told here too, it seems so unfair, that for the cost of registering a trademark ( around 125€) a person can take your name and get the advantage of years and years of hard work. He has offered to sell it to a competitor for 60,000 Euros !! We are looking into all aspects at the moment, this is a guy who does not even have an office or business, he has bought the trademark names of two businesses in the same town within 200m of each other, so as far as I can see its obvious what hes doing is in bad faith, but not so easy to argue in the face of the law.