

Ask HN: Buying a domain with someone else's brand in the title - e2daipi

What's the legality of using other peoples' brand names in your url.<p>For instance
http://www.googlefight.com/
http://www.google-analytics-book.com/<p>The first is descriptive of the service, and the second appends a product to the brand and application.<p>Does anyone know where/how the line is drawn?<p>gogggle.com?
googleappengine.com
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anigbrowl
Depends on whether you know a bored or up-and-coming trademark lawyer who's
willing to defend you against the inevitable lawsuit. Companies with
trademarks _have_ to defend them aggressively, or they can lose the right to
enforce them at all. So even if they don't actually object to google-my-
shmoogle.com, they may launch a suit to get the issue in front of a judge who
can say whether that's infringing or not. If they don't, a genuine infringer
like gooogle.com may point to g-m-s and say 'well you didn't sue them, so
you've effectively abandoned your trademark and now it's free for the taking.'
Unlike copyright, trademarks can last indefinitely; but also unlike copyright,
if abandoned or left undefended there is no automatic or minimum period of
legal protection. Also, the usual copyright arguments like fair use or parody
do not apply to trademarks in the same way.

As long as you are not competing in the same market and there is little or no
risk that consumers will confuse your brand with that of the famous brand,
derivative brands like this will often be allowed to stand. The point of the
big brand owner has been made, the big brand has been defended at law, and can
be defended in future against attempts at infringement. With the examples you
provide, I'd suggest a 50-50 chance of success for the first one but only a 5%
chance of success for the second. There's no hard and fast rule; trademark
litigation can get very hand-wavey. It has to be said that some companies
launch and then switch to a plan B name...after they've accrued a bunch of
free publicity by incorporating the famous brand and declaring themselves to
be shocked - shocked - at the subsequent legal action. It's a nice reliable
David-and-Goliath story, especially effective if the David company is some
little cottage industry focused on kids/kittens/kitsch.

I'm not a lawyer, and certainly not a trademark lawyer, so don't treat this as
legal advice.

