Any Legal Trouble If You Have Same Domain Name But Different .com/.net?

Question

I am making a website and I was wondering if there was any legal trouble having the same domain name but a different .com or a .net. It will be a dating tips website. Will there be any legal troubles i should look out for? Please list.

Answer 1

If you offer the same service as another Web site that is already offering that service with a different top-level domain, yes, you could be sued for trademark infringement, and you would probably lose.

For example, if you started eharmony.net as a dating service now, you could easily be sued by eharmony.com -- and would probably lose.

Trademark law generally holds that the first person to use a trademark for a given service, even if it's not officially registered as a trademark, has all the rights to use that trademark and all marks similar to it; no other person can use that trademark, or something similar to it, in order to sell the same, or similar, service.

In other words, you can't open a fast-food franchise called MacDonald's. And you can't run a dating service with a domain name that is similar to another dating company's domain name.

Now, if the other .com name has nothing to do with dating, that would probably be OK.

For example, if you had amazon.org as a dating site, that would probably be OK, since amazon.com isn't in the online dating business.

However, it gets harder to defend a new trademark the more unique the word is. For example, google.org would be difficult to use, because Google is an odd word; it is difficult for you to claim you aren't trying to ride Google's coat tails if you use its name, because its name is rare.

Of course, all this depends on whether the current mark holder decides he wants to sue.

And before anybody else pipes up about trademark registration, just as it is with copyrights, you do not need to officially register a trademark in order to assert full legal rights over a trademark. Your trademark is automatically created the first time you use it in commerce.

Memo to other answerers: If you don't know what you are talking about, don't answer.

UPDATE:

It's not copyright infringement to use a domain name similar to the one used by another company. ICANN officially owns every domain name in the world, so you don't have the ability to claim copyright to a domain name, because it's not yours.

You can, however, claim trademark rights to a domain name, because you used the domain name to identify a service or good you provide for a particular purpose in commerce., the same way you can use a word or term you didn't create -- such as Yahoo -- as a brand name for a good or service -- such as a Web portal.

It is not criminally fraudulent to use a service mark similar to one used by someone else to provide a similar good or service; that is strictly a civil matter. It is criminally fraudulent to represent yourself as someone else or your product as someone else's product. It's a fine line but that's why we have courts.

Answer 2

Yes, they could sue you. But if you're not making any money from it, or if it's not popular, they won't even bother. They'll just send you an email or letter telling you to transfer or drop the names. I registered a few domain names that had the word playboy in them. I never did anything with them but 2 months later I got some letters from Playboy's legal team threatening to take legal action if I didn't transfer the domain names to them. Not worth it going down that road, since it won't be profitable for you.

Answer 3

Any use of the same name as another company who previously used that name for the same or SIMILAR business, is actually a copyright infringement, and can also be construed as internet fraud, so not only can the original user of the name sue, if any complaints are made you couls be prosecuted by the authorities. In this case you could be looking at a considerable prison sentence.

Answer 4

There shouldn't be unless the domain is the same as a companies name or something, or of course if you claim to be affiliated with the other site and aren't...that it what I think anyway.

Answer 5

"Yes" it is legal, however if a company has a trade mark or suck trade names, then it can be a big deal. Say if I got microsoft.org. They would more than likely take action, and would most likely win.

So just becarefull.

Answer 6

None at all unless you make a copy of the other web site and try to pass off your site as the real deal.

Answer 7

no, it they didnt buy all the domain extensions, you can buy them and its totally legal, most big companies buy them all up.