Trademark domains can cause a lot of headaches to even the most seasoned domainers!
Why, oh why, oh why?
We’ve been witnessing this quite often lately:
Seasoned domainers aspiring to get domains that are obvious trademarks.
What is an obvious trademark?
Something that looks like a word made up from putting two words together.
It takes less than a minute to look up such terms at the USPTO.gov – the US Patent and Trademark Office.
So uber-domainer Frank Schilling – who wrote a very popular blog post the other day – has gone in the past after NameJet domains that are obvious trademarks.
We wrote about one such case in the past, Americar.com
This time around, ultra-popular Frank lost the battle over a trademark domain, as he came in second at NameJet. The winner of this obvious trademark violation bid $797 and thus got Toymax.com
Frank Schilling bid $10 less and spared himself the headaches of owning yet another problematic domain – with no less than 4 registered trademarks at the USPTO!
Sometimes, losing the battle makes one a winner! 😀
Lucius “Guns” Fabrice loses battle over Trademark domain
Lucius “Guns” Fabrice bid $728 less and spared himself the headaches of owning a problematic domain 😉
High ^5 fizz – did you bid $69 or $70 yourself? 😀
I was in at the entry-level $69 because, in the words of Peter Sellers’ character Chance the Gardener in the movie ‘Being There’, “I like to watch” lol.
Noticed the winner of toymax.com lists their address as Klongtoey, which apparently is one of the oldest and largest slums in Thailand. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought the winner previously had an addy in another country?
I’ve seen one or two interesting WIPO cases where the respondent has asserted they’ve never heard of the trademark before in the country they live in (and kept the name), hence a good number of the TM names at namejet and snapnames are to registrants who don’t live in the US (because you guys could also face some tough court-imposed $$ penalties).
One particularly interesting one to watch from the sidelines on Tuesday will be peoplesbank.com. Pass the popcorn!
Well, here’s another instance of Frank’s bravado 😀
Not only Frank Schilling loses battle over Trademark domain, he might be on his way to Domain Hell.
@fizz & Lucious: How do you manage to “watch” all auctions? There is always the risk of you being the winning bidder at $69 itself right? 🙂