American Family Enterprises LLC, operators of the domain name CreditZone.com, have applied for the registration of the matching mark, CREDITZONE.COM, at the USPTO. The mark consists of standard characters, without claim to any particular font style, size, or color and it exclaims the use of “CREDIT” except as shown.
The application cites January 11, 1999 to be the date of first use of the mark “anywhere” and January 1, 2020 the date of first use of the mark in “interstate commerce.”
This 21 year gap can be explained by the fact that the domain was parked with PPC ads the entire first two+ decades of its life. The application notes that “Credit and loan services” are the services related to the mark.
We have no reports of CreditZone.com either changing hands via a recorded sale, or appearing from behind WHOIS privacy. It could be one of these cases where a long term owner of a domain finally decides to develop it.
Indeed, CreditZone.com displays content related to financial services and appears to have been doing so since early 2020.
Applying for the registration of matching marks is an ongoing trend among owners of generic domain names, following the decision by SCOTUS on the Booking.com trademark application.
Since then, dozens of generic domain names have been applied to be registered as trademarks, inclusive of the TLD.
As of January 5th, 2021, BOOKING.COM is a registered trademark with the USPTO.
Will these applications become the new norm? Watch this video from NamesCon Online 2020.
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