Legal Options When It Comes To Conflicts On Trademarks And Domains

As an owner of highly recognizable trademarks and domains online, there is a big chance that sooner or later you will be involved in a conflict questioning the ownership and control of these trademarks. This should not come as a surprise. When this happens, the natural course is for the conflicts and disputes to be referred to courts. The only issue here is that the courts of law tend to act slowly on cases of this kind, so at times you have to wait a lifetime for the issue to be settled. The other option for you is to avoid the courts and to bring the issue to the domain name registrars. This is an understandable move since most of the conflicts results to the similarity in domain names.

If the road taken is with the courts of law, then there are set of steps that should be performed. The complainant should present legal arguments why the domain name registered under the name of the other person should be revoked or cancelled. This can be a difficult case to argue, and this is true for individuals who failed to register the trademark under his or her name.

But this has been resolved with the passing of relevant laws. For example there is a statute that will protect companies against personalities who register the domain name that is almost similar and confusingly similar to the existing trade name or domain name.

Was the trade name or domain name registered in bad faith?

Now there is a sufficient ground to file a case against someone who deliberately registers a similar domain name provided that some factors are satisfied. Here are some of these factors that are often validated by the courts of law.

• Does the person hold the rights over the domain name?

• Is the domain name the same legal name of the owner or identified with the owner in one way or the other?

• Did the domain name owner already made a commercial transaction even before the filing of the complaint?

• Is the domain name owner using the name in a fair manner?

• Is there that deliberate attempt by the domain name holder to divert the consumers from the original trademark owner in a confusing way just to gain undue advantage?

• Has the holder of the current domain tried to put the domain or trade mark name in the market for profit without the objective of clearly selling goods and services?

• In connection with this, has the owner of the domain name behaved in such a way that the domains was only registered only to sell it afterwards without the intent of really using the trade mark in a commercially viable way?

• Did the owner of the domain trade mark used questionable information in order to apply for domain and trade mark registration?

If it has been established that the first company behaved in a questionable manner when it first registered the domain and the main intent was to deceive, then there is a legal basis for the complaint on the trademark.