Hi there are some products i hav e been promoting for a while and ones that i want to begin to promote but curious as i dont want to get into trouble. for example on clickbank the farmville secrets because it has the name in domain and product what about ps3lightfix or wiidownloader dsidownloader xboxlightfix etc isnt this illegal and you could get sued. another question does this just relate to the domain or the name of the product itself. also can i the affiliate get in trouble for having a article that is promoting these sites or because i have ps3 or playstation in article title could i get in trouble. thank you
Do not mention any copyrighted terms anywhere. If XBOX is a trademark, don't get a domain with it and don't mention it anywhere.
It's not "illegal" but the TM holder can definitely sue you. You shouldn't be using the trademark anywhere - especially not in the domain name, but I wouldn't be mentioning it in the product either if you want to be on the safe side.
Yes, it is illegal, it is an obvious trademark infringement. It's up to the trademark holder to decide whether to sue or not, or they could ask you to drop the domain. You're going to get into legal trouble for infringing a trademark. I've had a couple of domains which contained a trademark for which I had some legal issues with. I wasn't sued, because I agreed with the tradermark holder to drop the domain. There are many stories where people get sued and lose a lot of money. Several farmville vendors as well as affiliates are also being sued for using the trademarked term farmville in their domain. Yes, even affiliates that we're simply using their domain to redirect traffic to the vendor site, are also getting sued for infringement. The moral of the story is, don't use such domain. You might get into legal trouble, and if someone sues you, you'll lose tons of money. If you do have a domain name that contains a trademark, there's is a good possibility that you'll get away with it, the internet is big, and the big companies don't take action against this on a regular basis, or unless it really bothers them. However, why take the risk? It's not worth it, just register a clean domain name without a trademarked term.
I'm assuming subdomains or subdirectories can be fine, right? www.mydomain.com/trademarkproductname-review
yeah thank you everyone so much for your responses. What about article titles like i had ps3 or xbox in one of those this is definitely not illegal right thanks
Technically, Sony or Microsoft could sue you for that too. I've received a couple of C&D letters over the past few years for writing articles using trademarked terms. Usually deleting the article in question satisfies the TM holder in that case...
An article title is not likely to cause you any trouble for trademark infringement as long as it is clear you are not associated with the TM holder and there isn't a likelihood of confusion. As far as I know, there has only been one case of infringement on a subdomain "jewsforjesus.blogspot.com" - and the case was settled before it went to court. A tld is another story... and you certainly don't want to register a trademark (or misspelling).