Do companies really go out of their way to confiscate domain names that contain copyrighted material? I just reged jamesbondgaming.com - do you think I will be sued? lol
I personally don't believe that you will be sued for that one, but it all depends on the company. Some are dedicated to go after anyone using their name elsewhere without permission while some are extremely lenient when it comes to that.
I am not 100% positive that you won't run into any problems. I think if you are planning on putting a lot of effort into your site, you might want to ask an attorney this question. I would really hate to see get your site up and running and then have to take it down.
It's certainly trademark infringement - but you never know if someone will come after you. It's a large franchise so I would think you are asking for trouble and have a good chance of hearing from them as soon as they hear about the site. They would probably only send a C&D and request the domain, but it's possible they could sue you for any income - and registered trademarks are able to collect treble legal fees. It's the name "James Bond" which is owned by someone - adding words doesn't do anything to prevent infringement (few exceptions like "jamesbondsucks" etc). Anything that rides the goodwill of a trademark is potential trouble.
Does anyone here actually know if the term "James Bond" is actually trademarked? After all, Ian Fleming himself lifted the name from someone else. As the story goes, he was stuck coming up with a name for his character when his eye lighted on a copy of the real James Bond's book on the birds of the West Indies, which was sitting in the bedroom of the Caribbean villa where Fleming was staying. This would not automatically prevent trademarking the name, but I wonder if Fleming or the Fleming estate ever did.
"James Bond" is a registered trademark of Danjaq, LLC. I also read some court decisions that revoked another persons attempt to use "007" as it was successfully argued that it was infringing upon the bond trademark.
Like others said - it depends on the company. I ran an ebay consignment business for a couple of years and originally named it BayBay Auction Services and had the domain mybaybay . com No more than a month later ebay had sent me a C&D telling me to stop using the domain and to let it expire which I did. Funny thing is they didn't even register it afterwords, was picked by someone else and is being used for something not related to ebay so I guess they don't mind that.
On the other hand, how would you feel if you had come up with a name, spent a lot of money and time developing a name only to have someone else come along and spend $8 to get a domain that rides the goodwill you developed? Trademarks are granted by classfication - so if you use a name in an entirely different use, you usually won't have problems. When you attempt to sell the same type of product, service or obvious attempt to profit on the trademark, you will then have problems. Most people register these problem domains because they are copying a larger, well-known name in an attempt to ride their goodwill. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to trademark a name in all classifications, so you will only see that will larger companies who want broad protection for their name. IBM is a good example. They even produced a jewelry line to be able to protect the name in that classification, not because they wanted to get into selling jewelry. Just because a domain is available to be registered, it gives no legal right to use the name.
It is my belief that ebay sends out some sort of automated cease and desist letter to anyone who registers a domain name with the term 'ebay' in it. I have gotten two from them so far - both domain names had nothing to do with ebay they just happend to end in 'e' then 'bay' (like shorebay, leavebay). I responded to their letter, explaining that my services had nothing to do with 'ebay', and they never responded back.
See here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=58527&highlight=amazon YMMV... Something tells me yours is nothing to worry about.