Similar Domain Names. Lawsuit? Cease and Desist?

That's a tough call without being a lawyer but I - having never been a lawyer or played one on TV - would suggest something a little more creative than a copycat domain name.
There is a chance that customers will be confused that your product is one of a series from the same source as the other and that will be a trademark infringement. If your product was not another dog product -- such as GS meaning Grey Suits or something else outside of the dog niche you'd probably be able to get away with it as nobody would really be connecting the two products because of the similar name.

Just my 2 cents........

The way you have described it you would have no problem.

Unless they have Trademarked the name you want to use all they can do is sit back and watch.

~Bill

The four-part test you want to have for your own business operation is to look at your competitors.

1. Would someone looking for your competitor's product be likely to find yours instead?

2. Would they be likely to buy your product instead of your competitor's product?

3. Would they no longer need your competitor's product after buying yours?

4. Would they be likely to THINK they were buying your competitor's product as they were buying yours?

When you're talking about a greyhound book and a German shepherd book, even if they found the GS book first, someone who owns a greyhound is unlikely to buy it. Even if they did, they would not have a book covering their greyhound. And there's little to no chance they'd be confused and think it was a book about greyhounds.

But what if your book was about whippets? They look a lot like greyhounds. If you mentioned greyhounds on the page, and all your advice in the book about whippets was equally applicable to greyhounds, and the average person might be confused about which this book was about... then the answers to these questions come back very differently.

If you're not sure how your product does on this test, you need a lawyer's advice. But if you're absolutely, 100% sure that you can give a solid "no" to all four of those questions? You're probably safe.

But if you want to be absolutely 100% sure you're safe, talk to a lawyer.

It doesn't need to be the SAME product that causes the confusion - it's also confusion about what company is offering a product. GSsecrets and GHsecrets could easily be confused as being a series put out by one company. Also - if the domain is already in use, it doesn't need to be officially trademarked to win a suit -- however, you wouldn't be likely to actually have formal charges pressed.

Trademark and copyright can get very dicey at some points.

Now = here's something you want to consider even if you are in a position to win a lawsuit if it ever came to one.

If I were a customer and saw GSsecrets and GHsecrets and they are both about dogs, I'd figure that person had a series going and would assume you to be the writer of both. What if the writer of the other product gets sh*t reviews, does something stupid or illegal, etc -- and people are confused and think that YOU are the one who did it because of the similarity in the product names?

It just makes good sense to steer clear and think of something not used yet.

No problem. It's not a registered trademark like Coke or Nike. I can already see someone regging WFsecrets.com it's available.

Just remember you can not trademark greyhounds or Great Shephards.

As I know this was just an example, double check that your real life instance is still applicable to the one you gave....

That would be 100% OK. Someone asked a question a couple weeks ago sort of like this - brand names in EMDs. One of the examples I threw out was Pepsi vs Coke.

cokevspepsi. org
coke-or-pepsi. com

chevyreviews. com
sonyledtv. net

If these sites are ok... Then you're ok.

Just make sure you create a "disclaimer" page to be safe :p

CHEERS!

I been out of the game for a while now, and came back to my old threads here to see if any new advice came in. Even though most of this is from 2010, I wanna say thanks to everyone for all the great advice!

I'm back in the game again now, and looking to launch my first "official" product that I will be creating an affiliate program for. This won't be for a couple months, but I'm about to register the domain for it and am using all this advice and it's all great!

Thanks again.

P.S. If anyone has any updated advice, feel free to chime in! /stick out tongue smiley

Good to hear your back in the game, good luck!