Would you buy a domain name with a big company's name in it?

Don't do it. Why take the risk of wasting your time on a site that could easily be taken down? I know of at least one person here at WF who has shared their regret over having done that.

Hold on let me put my flame retardant suit on... Ok here we go...

Depending on your marketing strategy, registering a trademarked name can work for you. Back in the day I worked for a company where I ran a large number of rewards sites. it was just before Christmas and we registered the domain names MyFreeDell.com, MyFreeCompaq.com, myFreeGateway.com and MyFreeHP.com - we pointed each one to a win a free laptop site featuring laptops from the each of the manufacturers. Then we ran a series of radio ads. After some testing we scrapped 3 of the sites and went strictly with myFreeDell because it got the lions share of the traffic. Did we get a letter and a phone call from Dell - yup! But if took them 3 months to get around to us. By then we were through the Christmas season, made bank on the campaign and added thousands of names to our list. The nature and structure of a rewards site made it easy for us to redirect everything over to Myfreelaptop.com once Dell finally caught up with us. By that time MyFreeDell.com was generating over $300K per month in revenue.

I wouldn't recommend this practice for every business model, but there are situations where it works - sometimes for just a short period and sometimes forever. Before you try anything like this, I suggest you research the company and get some info on how they treat copyright infringement. There some companies out there like Verizon who immediately hit you with a lawsuit. It's a dangerous game if you mess with the wrong company. But it also depends on how you ruffle their feathers. There's a big difference between using CanonEOS55.com to sell Canon cameras via Amazon vs putting up a website that says the Canon EOS 55 sucks. In the case of the former, they might not even bother you.

The bottom line is - It IS a risky proposition and the second you suggest registering a name like this, everybody comes out of the woodwork and says "OMG, NO don't do it". But the truth is... 99.99999% of the companies out there are going to send you a cease and desist letter before they do anything - IF they even do that. So if you can afford to take the site down and move on it can be quite lucrative. The company I worked for did this on a regular basis and they only got a handful of C&D letters over a 2 year period. And we registered hundreds of company and product names.

OK, I said it - let the games begin!

no...just buy a generic domain name

if you want to target a specific product with brand name....just post a page of review on that product....then start offpage seo for it...

in this way, you are able to get into the niche with brand name without losing your domain....

NO!!!!

If you use a Trademarked name it could end up costing you big $$$$

I have seen some people do it and successfully pull it off, like for example I have seen ezinearticles.org etc and they have benefited significantly from ezine articles popularity, however this is not advised

Only if I had saved up enough money for attorney's fees should they decide to sue you instead of just issuing a cease and desist.

Definitely not

I would not buy www dot cononeos55od dot com, but I would buy www dot buycanoneos55od dot com.

Just saying

Unless you have a brother-in-law who's a trademark attorney and doesn't mind spending loads of time fighting corporate attorneys - no way.

Seriously, most of these names that sell have absolutely no development on them, so they fly under the radar screens of the companies. The moment you start placing any content on them and they get picked up by Google Alerts, you'll be treated to a nice Cease and Desist letter. Can't blame them, it's what I'd do as well.

All the best,
Thom

If a domain name is a major purchase for you, dont do it.
If you can afford to lose all of them, give it a try. The chances of getting anything beyond a c&d are pretty slim.
Also do your homework on the brands you are considering, some (such as eBay, mentioned earlier) are very hot on brand protection. Others are not.

I say why not? You might be out 8 bucks but whoopidee doo. Just make sure you have your ducks in a row before actually developing and launch hard. Worst case scenario you get a CD order.

If you want to stay on the safe side, I'd suggest not.
read couple posts that fb are going after companies in the social space that uses the word face;

Almost everything I've seen or read say No, don't do it.

That said, there is another thread in the forum mentioning Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a site that tracks C&D notices. This was a new resource to me, and one I found interesting to check out.

If you are going get a domain with a name that could possibly get taken down, at least do it with some research showing how likely or unlikely you are to get into trouble.

Marvin

There are way to get around using trademarked name without needing a lawyer, I have 2 domains with paypal in them and PayPal/eBay attempted to force me to take them down until I sent one email replay back to them and haven't heard from them since.

There are a few rules you have to follow to avoid cybersquatting laws.

Definitely not.. spend more time and focus on something else that can actually give you money with such a high risk.

I would never do this.

Why would I want to spend a lot of time developing a site so that one day an attorney from the mentioned corporation could swoop in and steal my domain, because it is infringing on his trademark?

You may get by with doing this. But more likely, you will only get by with it for a few months or years, then all of your hard word will be flushed down the toilet when the mentioned corporation gets a cease-and-desist order, followed by the legal requirements to take your trademark-infringing domain away from you with no recourse on your side available to you.

I've built quite a lot of product-centric sites monetised through AdSense and Amazon, and I admit that in the past I've occasionally bought domains containing brand names, if a particular company has a range of similarly-named products that are all very popular and commanding of good search-volume.

I wanted the domains to help a little with SEO, and the keywords were just too juicy to pass up. Not a very bright decision, really - and not one I'd recommend making at all.

It's a bit disconcerting when you're running such a site, and you receive emails from potential/existing customers of that company, asking you for product support or warranty information and such. If they're mistakenly identifying you as being (or having ties to) that company, it is a very bad sign. Companies don't want people "impersonating them" (and this is how they will see it, even if it wasn't your intention), because of their fear that what you say/do could affect their reputation and damage their brand. There are other reasons why they wouldn't like it, too.

These days my sites are generally built out much larger and with a broader focus, and I've phased out those which were running on domains containing trademarks / brand-names, etc.

Again, I would not recommend it. You might get away with it for a while, but that will lure you into a false sense of security, and one day - when you least expect it - the inevitable likely will happen: you'll get hit with a take-down notice (and may or may not be asked to transfer the domain registration over to that company), or you may be threatened (or else just outright hit) with legal consequences.

My advice is do not risk it.