Hi there, I was wondering - I have seen a lot of books on Amazon about MySpace using MySpace in the title. I assume this is legal. However, are these books allowed to own domain names for their titles? IE 'Myspace for Dummies" - could they register www.myspacefordummies.com? Would that be legal or would it infringe upon trademarks or anything? Cheers, Pete
I'm no expert, but I would just buy it. If they later contact you with a letter requesting that you not use the domain name, simply buy another that is relative and redirect it for 30 days while you direct traffic to the new domain name. In other words, I'd personally take the chance. As long as you're not saying bad things about myspace then you'll likely never hear from them. Regardless of if/when they contact you, I'd set everything up now and establish yourself while you have the chance as it could likely be a great opportunity.
To be on the safe side, use subdomains or pages eg: myspacefordummies.mybooks.com or mybooks.com/myspacefordummies So your domain will be mybooks.com. You can sell multiple products using the same domain, and can leverage the traffic.
Registering a domain with "myspace" would certainly be trademark infringement since the content is "myspace" TM related. Even more aggressive in the lawsuit department is Wiley Publishing which has over 100 trademark registrations on "for dummies" and sues everyone who attempts to use it.
It is considered legal because Myspace probably gave them permission to use the Myspace(tm). Also they might be providing Myspace and Fox with royalties for selling such a book. There are a lot of people becoming wealthy of off Myspace and there seems to be hardly any trouble from the website, unless of course you are just outright spamming. In retrospect, if they wanted to publish a book that harps about how Myspace is becoming the next "crack cocaine", they could do it so as long as they stay political. In this case the publisher would be playing the 1st Amendment Card, a suave move that get seemingly any amount of garbage published. As far as domain names are concerned, the Dummies (tm) probably asked a head of time for permission to do that or they are using material from public domain OR they are indeed doing it illegally. I think if you try to make a fan site for Myspace you might be able to get it registered without any problem, but if you were to go through the act of outright profiting off of Myspace, you might need to pay royalties or ask for formal permission. This avoids law suits.