A team of highly paid lawyers and none of them suggested to ask over at the Google forums? (May be worth renegotiating the rates they charge you.) Anyway, So long as you make it clear that you are not associated with Google, then you "may" be okay. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=02ab73d5d3a60a7c&hl=en As for what its worth? meh, the bids at $40 ATM, I wouldn't go higher than that... well maybe to $50 tops. Cheers James
First, fire your attorneys immediately. No attorney should be allowed to practice when they can't even do a simple trademark search. The site is blatant trademark infringement. Second, ignore everything posted by "incomesinternational.com" - he is an idiot who doesn't know the difference between a copyright and a trademark. Google hadn't been in use for years, it's a coined term and google already has a registered trademark which cannot be contested. Third, reads Google's notice about registering their trademarks in a domain name. http://www.google.com/permissions/guidelines.html Fourth, Google already has a trademark on Adwords (Serial Number 78132568) and it's past the five years to contest it - again, their rights are cast in stone. As a registered mark, you could be ordered to pay treble their legal fees. Figure several hundred thousand dollars if they sue and bring you to court. Damages would be on top of that. How are you going to get your money back if the guy skips (assuming you aren't the seller in the first place)? The seller has problems with their feedback. It will cost you more to sue than the cost of the domain. Even if you win, you'll wind up losing money. I wouldn't want the domain in my name if you gave it to me for free. It's worth less than zero.
Just report the domain to Adwords or Google support and they will decide what is to be done about it....
LOL people like you just make my day. 1st I very distinctly differentiated between copyright and trademark. FAIL! 2nd According to because the word apparently hadn't been used in years it now becomes private domain? And how is that you established that the word had in fact not been in use? Did it at some point disappear from the dictionary? FAIL! By that standard, I could claim the word Anon. No not as a form of anonymous but in its full form, Anon, originally a word used to say 'see you later'. No longer appears in any common dictionary. So mr expert, are you saying I could trademark the word Anon because its no longer in use? FAIL! 4th Googles trademark on Adwords had zero to do with this. Adwords is a product name for a product marketed by the company who owns the product. Adwords as a singular form word is not a generic term and does not fit the criterion. FAIL! So all of your arguments were quite easily challenged and in each case FAILED! Now I concede that certain laws do exist to protect both trademarks and to protect against cyber squatting. But then I made a very clear point about that originally anyway. I guess you just had difficulties with the details. However none of those laws actually permit the trademark or copyright of any generic common term. It's for exactly this reason that Yahoo! is not Yahoo. Can you spot the difference? I highly doubt it. After you've got some 'actual' knowledge to support you rant, come back and call me all the names you like. Although you probably still won't get the reaction your looking for, but it's always fun to have these little debates. This type in particular is my favorite where the ranter usually has only opinion to back himself up with followed by random insults. Great work, you've really earned the respect of the readers with your insight and knowledge (that you plucked from thin air).
Look, you're a moron. "This one is actually a bit of a tight rope. Google has been wildly unsuccessful in copyrighting the name because the word google has been in existence for a very long time." You don't copyright a tradename. Google has not been in existence for a long time - you are confusing it with "Googol" - but it wouldn't matter if it had, google has many trademarks on the term, and is a famous mark which is a registered trademark, period. "You can't copyright or trademark a generic term." LOL, tell that to Apple, Amazon, and thousands of other companies. They've done it. It's a common newbie mistake to think you can trademark a dictionary word. Trademarks do not have to be exact infringement. A non plural version is still trademark infringement. Same with misspellings, phonetic, and even foreign spellings - anything that can present a likelihood of confusion. Now go look up the PerfumeBay trademark infringement case brought by ebay. Ebay won all the appeals. Don't post trademark guesses until you have a clue about what you are posting.