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late trademark ??

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biglolo

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Delaware.

hi , i am trying to start a company by a certain name , that name is taken (though their domain is hyphenated and i bought the original name domain).
they did not register the name as a trade mark and its free for the taking.


QUESTION!!

if i pay for the trademark and i take it, can i force them to stop using the name ? even though they had it 1st ?
 


FlyingRon

Senior Member
Company names and domain names are not necessarily trademarks, though they can be.

Just because a trademark is not registered doesn't mean it's up for grabs. Trademark rights arise from the mark being used in commerce, registration just gives some additional protections.

Buying and creating domains doesn't give you any rights as to similar domains. Domains are just names, they have no inherent rights. Indeed, if you have been found to have obtained a domain in bad faith (to interfere with a company with that name or trademark), you an indeed be found to be cybersquatting and have the name taken from YOU in a UDRP proceeding.

Now rather than me writing an entire treatise on trademarks and domain names, why don't you give us some actual details so we can determine if their are trademarks in existance, whether there is likely infringement between those marks, and what the domain possibilities are.

For example, I have a company called Sensor Systems. I've owned the domain sensor.com since 1993. There are no fewer than four other companies called Sensor Systems out there with various perturbations on the domain name. We assert Sensor Systems as an (unregistered mark) though we've owned other registered marks for some of our key products. We've not had any infringement issues. Occassionally, I'll get a misdirected communication looking for one of the others and I just forward that along (or return it to the sender with the correct address). Our markets are very, very, fringely related (we do geospatial software and they make GPS antennas). We had a small lawyer-letter-writing discussion on one of our other trademarks but we settled with the fact that the products were really in different markets and we agreed to cross-recommend each other's product if we encountered one looking for the other (One was an satellite image analysis package called Xcalibur and the other a document imaging system called Excalibur).
 

quincy

Senior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Delaware.

hi , i am trying to start a company by a certain name , that name is taken (though their domain is hyphenated and i bought the original name domain).
they did not register the name as a trade mark and its free for the taking.


QUESTION!!

if i pay for the trademark and i take it, can i force them to stop using the name ? even though they had it 1st ?
Trademark rights in the US arise from the use of the mark in commerce as an identifier for the goods or services being marketed. The first to use the mark as an identifier is the presumed owner of the mark (although this is a rebuttable presumption).

Registration of a mark with the USPTO is not a requirement in the US to have rights in a name, in other words.

The purpose of trademarks is to help consumers distinguish one company's products or services from those of all others. If everyone named their company "Sensor Systems," consumers would be hopelessly confused as to the origin of the goods or services.

Trademark law centers on consumer confusion.

I agree with FlyingRon that more details would help. In providing these details, however, please do not use real names. Thanks.
 

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