This is another one of those trademark/copyright type questions. I am about to register a domain name that is the title of a book on a similar subject. For example, let’s say there’s a book entitled “Car and Truck” about the history of motorized transport. I want to register a domain name “carandtruck.com” for a website which would also contain information about the history of automotives. AFAIK, that word combination is not a registered trademark. Legally, am I in the clear? Nothing prohibits authors or musicians from giving their works identical titles. Is that logic extended to domain name registration and websites?
(If I title my book “carandtruck.com” and that website already exists, I’m infringing on someone’s trademark. That has already been established in court, but I don’t think it’s a comparable situation.)
Your only potential problem is if you try to sell the domain name to the publisher or author of the book whose name is the same as your domain. Then you risk being labeled a cyber squatter, and these days they tend to prosecute such people.
If they approach you about buying it, you’re okay.
There was a bill in Congress to outlaw registering a domain name for the express purpose of reselling it to a trademark holder, but I’m not sure that it was ever passed. With all due respect to Caracticus Potts, I think any court case in such a situation would have to be civil, and the case law on domains is not exactly settled. If you have registered a name that happens to be the same as some trademark, you can probably use it with impunity if your website does not in any way introduce confusion between what you are doing and what the trademark holder is doing.
There was a man who had a young daughter named Veronica, so he registered veronica.com. The Archie comics people went after him for infringing on their trademark, but they backed off after all the bad publicity. Not sure how strong their case was. But you can’t really blame them–case law says that if a trademark holder does not take steps to protect their trademark, they could effectively lose it. That’s why you have the Lyons Group suing every local schmuck who dresses up in a Barney suit on the weekend for a few extra bucks. In another such case, some guys started a software company called Brainiac, but were sued by D.C. comics (Superman arch enemy by the same name). I think D.C. lost that one.
Baretta the Italian gun company unsuccessfully tried to sue GM for using the Baretta name on a car, but lost because no one was going to assume that the car was being sold by the gun company.
P.S. IANALawyer but I am in the domain name business.
Regarding Caracticus Potts’s comment about trying to sell the domain, it is certainly true that if you try to sell a domain you’ve registered, that can be used against you by a trademark holder trying to demonstrate bad faith. jseigle is generally correct about being safe as long as you don’t compete with the trademark holder.
It’s fairly typical for a trademark-holder to go after a non-competing site trying to force the transfer of the domain. In at least a few cases, the defendent has cited the fact that they never tried to sell the domain to the trademark holder or anyone else as evidence that there was no “bad faith” in their registration. FWIW, these cases are handled by WIPO, not US Courts.
World Intellectual Property Organization, the intellectual property rights wing of the United Nations. They mediate international IP disputes, and AFAIK they are the forum of choice for domain disputes handled by ICANN (which administers the COM TLD).
I think the complaintant can choose their forum, but many choose WIPO because it tends to favor corporate interests and trademark holders over fair use.