The registrant of Weed.com, a 1996 domain, has applied for the registration of the mark WEED.COM at the USPTO.
The trademark application was filed for the following services:
“Providing online health and wellness information about cannabis, hemp, cannabinoids, cannabis strains, and cannabis products.”
In the trademark application for WEED.COM, the applicant is claiming date of first use in commerce “at least as early” as on May 1, 2020.
Was the domain Weed.com sold as recently as last year?
While there is no recorded sale for Weed.com at NameBio, we know for a fact that the domain belongs to serial domain investor and entrepreneur, Alexander Tabibi.
The domain Weed.com was temporarily hijacked in 2019, along with other premium domain names belonging to Mr. Alexander Tabibi, from an account at Network Solutions. Mr. Tabibi managed to regain access to his premium domain portfolio soon after.
In the trademark application at the USPTO Mr. Alexander Tabibi is listed as the Chief Executive Officer of the entity filing for the registration of the WEED.COM mark.
We can safely say that the holding entity of the domain Weed.com indicates no fresh sale of the domain name took place. Weed.com is now in its pre-launch phase, as its web site indicates.
Why was WEED.COM applied for as a trademark at the USPTO?
It’s 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. We keep track of these applications, and so far none has been decided upon.
Will these applications become the new norm? Watch this video from NamesCon Online 2020.
Isn’t cannabis still a schedule one drug? Not one dispensary has a federal tm on any of their cannabis products. The best you can hope for is an individual state registration,
And actually the generic mark is not near as important as the G&S.
domain guy – I believe federal restrictions were removed almost 2 years ago and currently apply to cannabis products.
Update: As of October 2021 the mark appears to have been refused as merely descriptive: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn90427253&docId=OOA20211006125809#docIndex=0&page=1