Hmm...I was just wondering something.. I would like to know more information regarding registered trademarks and forums. What if a user on my forum registered a username that is a registered trademark? Could that company legally come after me and nail me for trademark infringement? Is it trademark infringement? Sorry, I'm just wondering if it is because I see a lot of usernames out on forums with the names Google and Yahoo! in them, but yet the two giants never seem to contact the webmaster to have usernames changed - I know in the domain world they would come after you if you had a domain with the name in it, but I would think that claiming their trademark as your username/title/name would just be as bad. Clarification appreciated. Thanks!
That's a good question. My initial "guess" is that they will contact you first. While you are responsible for what's on your site/network, you didn't create said usernames. However, it would be good policy to not allow people to use company names as a user name. Sure, you can't put every name in the world in a ban file, but you could mention it and perhaps ban some huge names like Msoft, Amazon, Google, etc.
One way you may be able to protect yourself is get ride of your ability to control the usernames. If you cant police the usernames how can you be held responsible. Are the people with trademark usernames claiming to be affiliated with the company name they are using? Are they using it in confusing ways? Are they in anyway benefiting from the brand? This is a tricky subject but I would think you are ok. Most likely someone will contact you if there is a issue.
That was my initial thought as well. The most likely scenario will be a TM owner contacting you in regards to an offense or potential offense.
There are laws that allow them to take the domain name with little cost. There is no similar procedure to get you to cease using a particular username, other than to simply request it. To legally prevent you from using a username or make a claim of trademark infringment based on a username on your site would require a substantially larger cost with an uncertain result. I think it likely your usernames are safe, so long as there is no attempt to use the username to confuse customers of the actual trademark.
It can be accurately assume that you would receive a C&D order to act on... the likelihood in any legitimate case this will never occur in most cases. The "likely" time it would occur is if such a username is used where the account holder is impersonating as a representative of the company or represnting themselves as the rightful owner of the mark. Legally, though you nor the account holder has any right to claim for the use of the mark - on the other hand "damage" to the mark must be occurring (or a good faith belief that it will occur) that can have a detrimential affect on the mark - thus the company with a rightful claim. Forgetting the username for a moment - how many times does "google", "yahoo" or "MSN" appears in this forum? Same thing... there is "good fair use" implied with any mark.
A trademark is more than a name, its the design look font and so on. I doubt your users names look like this unless they use images for there names or something. So I wouldn;t worry about it if I was you. If they are trying to make out that they are that company or there user name is a tradmarked website (eg www.trademark.com then there maybe an issue) but the trademark owner or legal team should ask you to do something about it before taking any action. They can't do much apart from ask you to remove it though.
Not necessarily. There are two types of trademarks - one is a name and another is an image. Our company has a trademark on it's product name, but does not have an image mark for a logo or stylized representation of that name. Still, I agree that you pretty much don't have to worry until a trademark owner contacts you with a C&D.
Hello You should ban all members of your forums right now, take the whole shit down and run, but before that call all the companies and apologize and maybe even pay small compensation to be safe. Man you are in lot of trouble now... (Better be safe than sorry) Sir. Uuno "Know It All" Turhapuro