Is It Illegal To Mention A Company's Name In Your Product?

Copyrights and trademarks are 2 completely different things

Thanks, Dean, what if we did not include the trademark in the domain name, yet we did in the product name? In other words, what if the domain name was something completely unrelated and yet within the product we mentioned "Amazon" many times throughout (for example, if the product was a series of videos about how to make money as an Amazon affiliate, we would not probably have to mention "Amazon" at least a few times in the videos, I think? Would that impose a legal risk?

Could you point me to the WSO so I can have a look? Either by direct-linking or a PM? Thank you!

Definitely. And, theft to drive too fast.

And if you don't it's what? An invasion of privacy? Even Google doesn't refer to it's trademark this way.

If you have any questions I suggest you google it.

Whoa? What is that lower case google? That is me using google as a generic search reference, which Google does not want because it could eventually lead to Google losing its trademark.

Here is a cool list of trademarks that lost their trademark protection, like Zipper is now zipper.

Why is that?

Because a main purpose of a trademark is to identify a product with its creator to avoid consumer confusion. Using a trademark has nothing to do with copyright. Using a trademark like Google, as I just did, is not an infringement of trademark.

If I created a search engine called GoogleOne your first thought upon seeing that name is not that I created it but that it is a new product by Google, Inc. Hence, consumer confusion and trademark infringement.

However, if Microsoft, Ask, IXQuick, Duck Duck Go, etc., all provide googles, because google has become a generic reference to a search service, then Google loses its trademark because it is just another company providing a google. There is no consumer confusion because google is not associated with any company, but is associated with a type of product that many provide.

Which brings us back to the original questions in the thread about whether Amazon Mastery System is infringing and whether it matters if it is somehow "beneficial" to Amazon.

Benefiting the trademark owner is irrelevant and a common, but false, excuse marketers use.

You can go to a bookstore and find hundreds of books with the name of a product or brand in the title. How to Create a Profitable eBay Business. How to Fix the Brakes on Your Chevy. The Warrior Forum for Dummies.

It's obvious a third party is creating these products and this is obvious from other information on the product, such as the name of the product creator.

Creating a product called: eBay's Guide to Selling for Profit might be different since the title implies the product is created by eBay.

Thanks to massive cybersquatting there are special rules for domain names. Unlike a book, whether the name of the title may include a brand, but there is other obvious information about who wrote the book, a domain name stands alone. From just the domain name is there any confusion about whether the trademark owner owns the domain?

The law in this area can be very complex and court opinions vary, but compare these two domains:

amazonsystem.com and fredsamazonsystem.com

I don't know how the former would be decided, but the latter is probably not infringing even though 'amazon' is used in the domain. No one would think Fred's Amazon System was created by Amazon. It was created by Fred.

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http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5270385

As I read this you had a blank site and just a domain called amazongreen.com. Perhaps the domain was still parked.

One lesson here is when you buy a domain to immediately put content on it that shows there is a non-infringing purpose. This may not have fit with your biz plan of using this as an Amazon affiliate, but you could have used this domain to discuss deforestation of the Amazon and the effect on world agriculture, farming, meat production, weather, global warming, etc.

Later, you possibly could even have added Amazon affiliate links without a problem from Amazon.

As for the issue of cost if Amazon were to have pursued a legal claim. There are two primary possibilities, a domain UDRP dispute and a trademark dispute.

It costs nothing to defend a UDRP claim on your own and you probably would have won because Amazon is a geographic term predating the commercial website. I have seen many win UDRP claims like this on their own.

If Amazon would have filed a trademark lawsuit in US federal court (by the way, it would not have because of what I am about to say) you may have had scores of attorneys lining up to defend you for free. Why? Because at that point, with just a domain name with an obvious generic purpose, and a legitimate use in mind, not only would lawyers be primed to get paid when sanctions were levied against Amazon for a frivolous claim, but they would be looking to get paid again to settle a threatened malicious prosecution claim against the company.

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