Actual use of another's trademark name as a domain name

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Speculating in domain names is not the only way to make money by registering another's trademark as a domain name. For example, although the word "Viagra" is a registered trademark owned by Pfizer, Inc., other companies not associated with Pfizer use the Viagra name in their domain name as a way of marketing the fact that they sell the drug. A company may also hamper its competitors' ability to market its product over the Internet or attract its customers by registering its competitor's trademark as a domain name. Not only does this prevent the trademark holder from using its own trademark as its domain name, it allows a competitor to take advantage of the goodwill that the trademark holder has worked hard to create.

In Cardservice International, Inc. v. McGee, Cardservice International, a credit and debit card processing service which owned the registered trademark "Cardservice International", brought an action against one of its competitors, McGee, after McGee registered and began using the domain name cardservice.com to advertise and market its services. The Court found that McGee's actions violated the Lanham Act, explaining that:


Because of McGee's use of "cardservice.com", Cardservice International has no access to an Internet domain name containing its registered mark, and must use a different domain name. Cardservice International's customers who wish to take advantage of its Internet services but do not know its domain name are likely to assume that"cardservice.com" belongs to Cardservice International. These customers would instead reach McGee and see a home page for "Card Service". They would find that McGee's Internet site offers advertisements for and provides access to the same services as Cardservice International -- credit and debit card processing. Many would assume that they have reached Cardservice International or, even if they realize that is not who they have reached, take advantage of McGee's services because they do not otherwise know how to reach Cardservice International. Such confusion is not only likely, but, according to McGee, has actually occurred at least four or five times since he began using "cardservice.com".

Trademark names have also been used as domain names to sell goods that do not compete with the goods or services offered by the trademark holder. In Hasbro, Inc. v. Internet Entertainment Group, Ltd.,46 the Court granted Hasbro a preliminary injunction against Internet Entertainment Group, prohibiting it from using the name "CANDYLAND" and the domain name candyland.com, which it had used for a web site containing sexually explicit material.

In Avery Dennison Copr. v. Sumpton, the Court held that the defendant diluted plaintiff's trademarks, "Avery" and "Dennison", by registering and using the domain names avery.net and dennison.net. The "twist" in Avery Dennison is that the defendant registered the domain names, along with over 12,000 others, not because of the famous trademark, but because they are popular surnames. The defendant registered the domain names in an effort to solicit business from persons who would like to use the domain name as part of their personal e-mail address. The defendant did not argue that the Avery and Dennison marks were not famous. The Court found that the defendant's use of the marks was commercial, and that such use diluted the plaintiff's trademarks. The Court did not find it significant that the plaintiffs were able to, and had, registered domain names bearing their trademarks with the top-level domain of ".com". Because there was no evidence that the defendant actually registered the domain names for the purpose of selling them to the highest bidder, the Court ordered the plaintiff to pay defendant $300.00 for each of the names, representing the investment defendant made to register the names.

Finally, some domain name registrants try to make money by registering domain names containing intentional misspellings of a trademark name. For example, the domain name wallmart.com is offered for sale at http://www.wallmart.com/purchase.html for $6,000.00. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., maintains a Web site at http://www.wal-mart.com. Another example is the domain name amazom.com, a domain name that is just one letter away from the popular Amazon.com online bookseller. The web site at amazom.com allows users to buy books over the Internet, but from companies other than Amazon.com.

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The domain names and trademarks are becoming increasingly sensitive owing to the fact that first they are so difficult to get the smaller and popular ones . Plus add to it that every one wants to make money fastest online and for this they take advantage of the already established ones . You need to guard against unscrupulous competitors that may try to incorporate your domain name in their meta tags to obtain search engine rankings under your name. If you have a domain name trademark, you can go after these individuals and compel the search engines to remove their listings.