Registering a trademark requires the assistance of a competent attorney.
A trademark application with the USPTO for the terms “Domain Auction” has been deemed as “merely descriptive“, thus denying the registration of the mark.
The application was filed in July, after the domainer registered DomainAuction.XYZ as a sample of use in her application.
According to the correspondence from the USPTO:
“Registration is refused because the applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s goods and/or services. […] A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of an applicant’s goods and/or services.”
In an interesting twist, the trademark applicant was involved in a UDRP filed by Brazilian petrochemical corporation, Petrobras; as the Respondent, she lost the domain in that case.
Trademark applicants are thus advised to leave the registration of trademarks in the hands of expert intellectual property attorneys, or risk being denied at the USPTO for a variety of reasons.
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What must be the additional features to be added in a domain to be registered?
Rave – A word or phrase cannot be merely descriptive to be registered. The focus isn’t the domain, it’s the brand. An easy way is to register a unique mark, such as “Sedo” first. Then, “Sedo Auctions” or ‘Sedo Domain Auctions” could be registered.