Hi. I am after a small bit of advice. I own a .COM domain that is the firstnameonly.COM of a celebrity. This name is a unique name and rarely heard of if ever. Could i sell stuff related to this artist on the website? For example: Michael.com (could i sell stuff related to michael jackson?)
Yes, its your website so you can do whatever you want. And it is a good idea because the name of the website is not long and probably easy to remember. Go for it
So i would have no problems with trademark violation? even if the name is a custom name? rarely heard of? As stated, it is ONLY the first name not the surname also.
As far as I know you can't trademark one name (If it's not made up or something). So, yeh, I think it's ok to sell the things you want.
Using the first name and selling the artist related articles will definitely shows your real faith and that should be more than enough to make your website illegal due to copyright infringement.
Whats the best thing to do with this domain name? So by using ONLY thew first name of the celebrity .COM i can get in trouble for selling stuff related to that celeb? is that right? or not?
I probably should let you all know that this person is not yet a celebrity but is going to be HUGE big very soon! Does this change the situation at all? I simply own the .COM
If it's a really famous celebrity, you might want to concentrate about writing about him/her and relying on adsense instead of selling products related to the celebrity. Or you can simply put the domain at top for the keywords for that celebrity and wait untill he/she (or prople working for him/her) wants to buy your domain.
Or you can simply put the domain at top for the keywords for that celebrity and wait untill he/she (or prople working for him/her) wants to buy your domain. What do you mean by this? Woudl the best thing to do be put the domain up for sale? or run a fan page on it?
Yes you can easily run your website, If a domain name is available in market than you can easily book because trade mark condition is not apply on domain names.
If you want to know what can happen, research the case of madonna.com. It cost the former owner over a million dollars in legal fees in addition to the loss of the domain.