One of my websites grosses a significant (to me) amount per year. It is a very popular informational website and the site name and url are 2 words. For the sake of argument, lets say it is turtleworld.com. (it isn't) I have 2 recent competitors that have cropped up and made similar monetized informational sites that are called turtlesworld.com and turtleworld.org. (substituting my site name, of course) And now for some questions (Please excuse my ignorance but I have very little knowledge of trademarks) 1. Do I need to get a trademark to protect my brand? 2. If so, what can I do with the trademark once I have it? 3. Is is too late to get the trademark now that they have already created the websites? 4. How complicated is the trademark application? 5. Can I do it myself or even with the help of a service like legalzoom? Thanks for reading and I look forward to any answers you can give me.
Trademark is already a good thing to have. If you make good amount of $$ per year then why not spend some to protect your brand. You will notice whenever a site will grow many other people will try to use your brand for their promotion, and if you don't have a trademark you cant protect yourself.
1. Descriptive terms cannot generally be trademarked "i.e. "apple" for a site about fruit. "Apple" for computers can be trademarked. You'll first need to establish if your name can be trademarked. 2. Trademarks are established by first usage in a classification. You must have been the first person to use the term for that usage (just not ahead of the new sites). Since trademark infringement does not have to be exact, you should have a trademark search done. i.e. Appple might not be a trademark, but it would be infringing upon the "Apple" trademark. It does not have to be used on the web - i.e. they could have a mail order business without a website, they still have first usage. 3. It's not too late if you were the first person to use, and continue to use, the term. The trademark will list the date of your first usage. 4. The trademark application isn't hard if you know what you are doing. I would advice using a trademark attorney for the first time - They would likely charge around $1000+ including the $300 or so filing fee and perhaps the search. If you do it yourself and make a little mistake, they will reject your application 6 months or so down the road and you'll have to pay again. 5. I would certainly get a trademark if for no other reason than to secure your rights to usage. As far as using it to stop these other sites, it is going to be expensive if they just don't drop the domain or turn it over to you upon demand - many will do just that. If they don't turn over the domain, then you have to either sue them or file a UDRP to take the domain. A lawsuit would be very expensive. A UDRP you can do yourself for about $1000 (again, I would advise using an attorney unless you study and really know what you are doing). An attorney would probably charge around $4,500. That gets you the domain, no fees or award. 6. Having a registered trademark will also be preventative. A lot of people wrongly thing you only have to check for registered marks - but that will keep many of them from registering a competing domain and causing you problems down the road.