Flippa.com takes their ‘Flippa’ trademark seriously – Threatens to sue domainer

Flippa is a registered trademark at the USPTO.

Nothing wrong with protecting one’s mark, service mark or trade mark. That’s the reason the certification exists in the first place.

Australian domain marketplace, Flippa.com, contacted the owner of the domain name Flippex.com threatening to sue if he uses the domain for monetary gains.

The story gets really interesting, considering that the owner of Flippex.com was warned about the domain, when he asked for its evaluation on DNForum:

“Growing tired of buying domains names from GoDaddy auctions, I decided to register my own –> Flippex.com

Flippex will focus on real-estate, specifically, flipping houses to earn revenue. I already have the logo drafted in Photoshop and will need to start working on the website itself.”

Flippa.com registered the trademark “Flippa” not just for domain-related auctions, but for providing a platform, method and technology for users to trade, buy and sell a large variety of goods and services.

As the Flippa trademark states:

Dissemination of advertising for others via the Internet; Operating online marketplaces for sellers of goods and/or services; online trading services in which sellers post items to be auctioned and bidding is done electronically; business monitoring and consulting services, namely, providing information, data, statistics, analysis, and news in the field of online business

It’s clear that using Flippex.com to “flip” homes would directly infringe on the Flippa trademark as it’s confusingly similar for the same class of services.

According to the Flippex.com owner, Dave Slutzkin – Manager of Flippa.com – found his initial thread on DNForum and contacted him privately, warning him about the domain. That thread ranks very high in Google when someone searches for “Flippa tm“.

Moral of the story: when launching a service or product, make sure it’s not infringing on existing marks. Such a research can be performed diligently only by qualified intellectual property attorneys.

Now, if only Flippa would respect the famous trademarks that are being violated in its marketplace!

 

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