PornMD

I'm in Brujah's same boat - a domain owner above all, though I'm not in the adult biz myself at all except for selling adult domains. My stance is that tube would technically not be recognized as a generic term meaning video site as of yet, and as such sextube is a legit trademark/brand and they would win based on first usage and first to trademark over hardsextube. Though that then brings up the question of whether or not since every tube site is clearly banking off of the overwhelming popularity of YouTube, could YouTube go after any tube site with You or Tube in their name based on the "confusingly similar" principal and bad faith? Lord knows PornHub would cheer as YouPorn and RedTube get snapped away, lol. Who knows, perhaps big G is waiting for someone else with a tube site and a TM to be the first to try and make a precedent setting case for the term tube not being generic for video site so that they can then march in and have a much easier case to make.

Anyways, MY issue is more with your ownership of typos/TM names of other companies. Whether you were to give them up to the TM/site owners or not in the past, you still have them and seemed to gloss over the ethics of having them. Another example in a different industry off the top of my head is FullTiltPoker - they own all kinds of typos of most other poker sites, and instead of going after owners of typos of their own site, they buy them up instead, which avoids hypocrisy.

Also, from the point of arguing that HardSexTube has illegal content and why anyone would defend them given that, you looked a bit hypocritical with the whole advertising on illegal tube site issue you just went through with people on here. One of the big things that can get on people's nerves are the rich/powerful that believe laws/rules should apply or not apply only when it suits them. We're stuck with an economic mess in the U.S. thanks to big corp execs and politicians like that.

Lastly, as others have indicated, you probably WOULD be better off letting all such sites simply operate as-is anyways because every large "_____SexTube.com" site would give you collateral traffic, and given you're a tube site as well, you could very well end up stealing some of their visitors from that. I realize that goes against the whole point of having a TM, but not every TM owner avidly goes after domains with the TM in them. Some are notorious for doing it (Olympics) and some others rarely if ever do it. It's hard to say given that that not going after a TM-infringing domain would indicate you're not protecting your TM.

Anyways, good luck with the whole situation and hopefully you do work out a deal where both sides are happy. I don't think you were deserving of all the drama the situation attracted, but hopefully now you realize even if you were to have sought out and won the domain, it would be a pyrrhic victory at best...reputation is generally worth more than money.

__________________