1. Anonymous

    12 February 2010 11:27am

    I work for a manufacturer who is now looking to increase their share of the market online. Our problem is a number of online retailers also sell our products and our using our reputable brand and product names as domains. For example:

    mybrandname-parts.co.uk and productmodelname.co.uk

    We could just stop supplying these companies with our products but they could continue using the domain names which also sell our competitors products

    Is there anything we can do to stop them using these domains? If the brand and product are trademarked does this give us legal rights in this situation?

    Thanks 

  2. Colin Watson

    Director at Watson Hall Ltd

    13 February 2010 11:29am

    Colin Watson

    Perhaps you need to discuss this with a lawyer with experience in this area?

    For .co.uk domains (your examples) you may also want to read:

       http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/

    Regards

    Colin Watson
    Technical Director
    Watson Hall Ltd for website security

  3. dan barker

    E-Business Consultant at Dan Barker

    13 February 2010 23:42pm

    dan barker

    hi, Anonymous,

    yeah - if you tell them to cease & desist they will. There's a ton of info over on the Intellectual Property Office's site should you need any reassurance: http://www.ipo.gov.uk

    It's probably worth weighing up the pros/cons very carefully first though, and worth treading carefully to avoid annoying half of your resellers!

    dan

  4. Richard Powell

    eCommerce Professional at Freelance (Directrix Digital)

    14 February 2010 09:53am

    Richard Powell

    I agree with Dan that this would likely upset your resellers. They have some goodwill and searcdh engine rankings built up with those domain names.

    When I have dealt with trademark and domain name issues in the past, I have been lucky to have good in-house lawyers each time.

    For future product releases, try to get the domain names as soon as your company has decided on the product name, but before you announce it publicly.

  5. Anonymous

    15 February 2010 17:29pm

    Is there anything we can do to stop them using these domains? If the brand and product are trademarked does this give us legal rights in this situation?

    In a word no, many have tried and if you stop supplying them they can probably take you to court for blocking trade, its very diffacult to stop someone once they are up and running under a trade account.

    Your options are to buy the domain, work with them but they have no legal obligation to give you the domain name if they are legitamatly selling your product on the site. If they were selling a different brand / product under that domain then you can go for them.

    cease & desist can be over written by EU selling laws under name blocking and creating a cartel provention of fair trade etc etc.

    If you go down this route before you speak to a lawyer check out similar cases sush as tesco, bentley, rolls royce and many others who have fought won and lost.

    I'm no lawyer but have worked on this many times on both sides of the fence and there is no clear guide as to whether you will win or loose your case. Put the money into marketing the right URL.

  6. M Jain

    Online Marketing Consultant at M Jain Consulting Inc..

    02 March 2010 12:54pm

    M Jain

    You can buy those domains with your brand name or you can increase your visibility on search engines by having more brand oriented websites, pages, Sponsered Ads, in a way you can dominate the first few listing in search engines which would help you enjoying the highly convertible brand traffic.

    Thanks,

    Jain

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