question Should I trademark my domain?

[CharlieBrown]

I have been running certain websites for over a decade. Let's call them "CharliesCoolFridges.com" and "BestFridges.com" - I registered the domains over 10 years ago, developed the websites, and I am actively running the websites successfully. I also created a lot of content, youtube videos, reviews, etc for both websites.

As the websites became successful, I became aware of cyber squatters buying up various typos and misspellings of my domains, or alternative versions of my websites, such as:

CharlieCoolFridges.com
CharliesCoolFridge.com
BestFridge.com

I want to protect my brand, so I was thinking of trademarking my domains. From my understanding, trademarking "CharliesCoolFridges.com" should be OK, while "BestFridges.com" might run into problems. But, either way, should I go ahead and file a trademark at https://www.uspto.gov/ for both of my domains?

Then, should I trademark the phrase "Charlies Cool Fridges" in addition to "CharliesCoolFridges.com" ? I am creating lots of content and spending money on my brand, so I want to protect is as much as I can. Then, I would also potentially be interested in filing WIPO action to get control of the cyber squatting domains.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[aleksey.k]

+1 for USPTO. Otherwise, someone might create the same brand and try to take down your website under UDRP. It's not a very often situation, but avoiding it is totally worth of time being spent

 

[Darlington Omeh]

What you just said is the best action to take. If you don't, someone else may come for you in the near future.

 

[bhartzer]

If you've put in the time and effort to create the brand, and if there is a significant amount of searches per month for your brand, you should protect it. You don't necessarily have to trademark the domain--you'd trademark the brand instead.

You can always protect your domain itself by making sure it has a high DNP Score (which will minimize the risk of losing it). You can also apply for domain protection at DNProtect.

 

[Domainnature]

Hello, yes you should.
Today I got into looking about trademark and found an interesting Link on USPTO website, newbies should look into this before registering similar domains.

 

[bhartzer]

Before registering domains, you definitely should search the TESS system from USPTO. We actually do that as a part of the DNP Score for you, so if you check the DNP Score of the domain name it will tell you if there is a trademark issue with the domain name.

 

[Darlington Omeh]

Before registering domains, you definitely should search the TESS system from USPTO. We actually do that as a part of the DNP Score for you, so if you check the DNP Score of the domain name it will tell you if there is a trademark issue with the domain name.

I think you guys need to add link to the DNP at the DNForum navigation bar.

 

[CharlieBrown]

Thank you for all the advice, I appreciate it.

 

[ecoracer]

It's not yet clear to me but to be more secure apply for a TM for both seperate: "domain name" and "domain name + tld extention" ...

I don't know how big companies trademark their brand/s, recently lottery.com did apply for TM + tld inside ... i read this somewhere ... It seems logic to me to apply for both legaly protective speaking.

 

[amplify]

It's not yet clear to me but to be more secure apply for a TM for both seperate: "domain name" and "domain name + tld extention" ...

I don't know how big companies trademark their brand/s, recently lottery.com did apply for TM + tld inside ... i read this somewhere ... It seems logic to me to apply for both legaly protective speaking.

Might've seen my comment on DomainGang?

I'm really unsure how that would work with a generic like Booking.com being trademarked and Booking.net coming along...

Lottery.com applied for the registration of the matching #trademark

Lottery.com applied for the registration of the matching #trademark

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