Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenny B!
If someone is infringing on your trademark you need to open a case with ICAAN and it gets sent to arbitration. Last I checked it cost roughly $1600 to file a claim plus legal fee's.
I have never opened a case with ICAAN but have been on the receiving end when two very large adult companies came after me for domains, both cases I won and didn't cost me a penny. The companies who held the trademark had to pay ICAAN and their lawyers.
With that said I didn't go and buy the exact name, it wasn't far off and did include their name in the url.
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That's fine except that you can also lose and be fucked. For example, the owner of musclemagazine.com (who is a total douche bag) offered the domain back to muscle magazine way back when (97' i think) and they told him they had no idea what a domain was and called him a geek and hung up on him. He then put a forum on it. A few years later, they demanded he turn over the domain and he told them to fuck off. They took it to the WIPO and lost. Had they just prepared a lawsuit and sent a demand letter, he would have turned it over. As it is, he still owns the domain and the entire world thinks HE is muscle magazine, he gets into all body building shows, all pro body builders know him, he gets endless product samples sent to him, clothes etc.
The threat or an actual civil suit is far more effective to protect a registered trademark where there is the added bonus/threat of statutory damages and legal costs. It depends on the situation of course, how deep everyone's pockets are, how determined each party is to fight to the end and so on.
