Domain name worth selling?

Hi Solag,

There are plenty of domains available which contain other people's trademarks, but they're of no use to anyone else for any commercial purposes. That's why they're available.

There are some purposes for which courts find it legitimate to use someone else's trademark in a domain-name, but they do tend to get tested in court sometimes (a lot of it's "precedent law") so this is for people with deep pockets. Those permitted uses also tend to exclude anything that involves financial gain/marketing.

Among the things that can and regularly do happen, when the trademark owner discovers such breaches of trademark, are:-

• They can tell you take it down
• They can take the domain from you
• They can take from you any money you've ever made through the site
• They can sue you for additional damages for flagrantly breaching their legal rights

Don't imagine that because "you're helping them to make sales" (as is often the case) they'll decide to be lenient. That isn't how it works. The point is that owning a trademark effectively confers obligations as well as rights on the holder: when it comes to trademark renewal time, if it can be shown that they've knowingly failed to protect their rights with regard to the trademark, that can be held against them. Some companies, for this reason, have the policy of pursuing all breaches of the trademark routinely and without reference to the motives/purposes/circumstances of the defendant.