Hey guys! So here's the scenario.. A group of friends and I are putting up a social commerce website targeted at folks in the Philippines (a couple of my friends live there). In our excitement, we registered our domain right away only to find out later that there's an existing social networking website serving a different Asian country with a remarkably similar domain name. Our services aren't limited to the internet, by the way. We have services that require "physical" presence in the market, which is why we're only launching it in the Philippines. My questions are: Would having a similar domain name cause us problems, despite the two websites serving different markets? Should we consider renaming? Or maybe we should consult with an SEO expert so we get our site on top? We kinda like the name we've chosen. So if its possible to keep the name and achieve top page rank, then GREAT!
It all depends whether you are in direct competition or not... You might be looking at trademark infringement if they prove that you are trying to portray your site as theirs, therefore misleading the end consumer... How big is that other company? It really depends on how far they could go with this...
By the way, similar problem is described on the nissan.com website, where the services were totally unrelated, but Nissan still sued the site owner for trademark infringement... I suggest you check out that article!