Domain Name

Domain Name Trademarks

As your Internet business grows, the value of your domain nameincreases. The issue of a domain name trademark should move tothe top of your list. You need to guard against unscrupulouscompetitors that may try to incorporate your domain name intheir meta tags to obtain search engine rankings under yourname. If you have a domain name trademark, you can go afterthese individuals and compel the search engines to removetheir listings.
What Is A Trademark?
A trademark is a distinctive item that is used to identify alogo, product, device, package or service. The trademarkidentifies the item as being provided by a particular firm. Toprotect these items you can obtain a mark from the patent andtrademark office that prohibits others from trying to gaineconomic advantage from your mark.
Domain Name
The patent and trademark office views domain names in a uniqueway. The office views the “http://www” element as a part ofthe file transfer process, not your domain name. The “.com”,”.net”, etc., designations are considered top-level domainidentifiers and are also disregarded for the purpose of adomain name trademark. For example, our domain name ishttp://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com. If we submitted thedomain name for registration, only the”sandiegobusinesslawfirm” portion would be considered for amark.
Locators Cannot Be Registered
A domain name is a locator for file pages. When you type inyour domain name, a server locates and displays files. If adomain is used solely for this purpose, it will not be granteda mark. Instead, the domain name must be incorporated into thesite. For instance, Amazon is recognized as an onlinebookstore and the site actually has the word “Amazon” on everypage. Since “Amazon.com” is more than a locator, Amazon canapply for and receive a trademark. If Amazon used the domainname, bookstore.com, the company would be able to register”Amazon”, but not “bookstore.”
Generic and Descriptive Terms
Domain names that are generic or descriptive in nature cannotbe registered because they fail to designate a distinctiveproduct or service. For example, “sandiegobusinesslawfirm” iscomprised of generic terms and describes who and where we are,to wit, a San Diego business law firm. This domain name cannotbe trademarked. The same result would occur with bank.com,book.com, advice.com, etc.
You may be thinking, “What about ‘Coke?’ “Coke” is atrademarked term because it is a distinctive term for a softdrink product. It just so happens that a brilliant marketingplan has convinced most people to refer to soft drinks as”cokes”, even if they actually prefer another brand!
Trademarks are an important factor in protecting your Internetbusiness. Armed with a trademark, you can keep competitorsfrom pulling traffic off the search engines when people searchfor your site.
Richard Chapo is with http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com -a law firm providing legal advice to California businesses.This article is for general education purposes and does notaddress every facet of the subject matter. Nothing in thisarticle creates an attorney-client relationship.