Plural of Trademark

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Daivam

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Nov 6, 2007
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So I was wondering, what are the rules when it comes to a plural form of a trademark... As I understand it someone who owned a business and a domain called credit card (creditcard.com) wouldn't really have much of a case against someone with a related business and domain of credit cards (creditcards.com). Primarily due to the general usage of the terms. However Facebook would have a good case against someone who created a domain called (facebooks.com) especially if they attempted a social networking site.. Probably regardless

My question is would a company who for instance made tea and trademarked the name Tea Way with the domain teaway.com, have a case against someone who ran a blog about the various ways of tea (production, consumption and the like) called Teaways.com given that it it is a separate if related niche and has a purpose for choosing the domain outside of capitalizing on Teaway.com's traffic or fame. Regardless of the fact it very likely monetizes with competitors of Teaway.com, and therefor does compete indirectly?
 


I imagine it would really depend on how common the word or phrase is. In your example you could probably make a pretty good argument for having the right to the domain.

But.... The real question is what is the owner of the trademark going to think and what are the chances of them coming after your domain? The most likely have deeper pockets and if they really think they are right they will come after it. (most likely after you have spent time and money getting it ranked) Will it be worth it to you to fight it out in court. It could get really expensive and eat up any additional profit you made from the domain and then some.

I believe in most of these cases the risk vs reward is too low to mess with.
 
What if you ran a business Teaching Elephants in Alternate Ways. And your website was TEAways.com
 
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