We have been threatened (again) by a large organisation wanting a couple of domain names we own

****marketplacephotographers

**** are a large clothing site. A s o s

We aim to provide services and advice to people who use there site.

They claim trademarks stop me using said domain and want me to give them to them at my cost.

I see no issue with using the name is the contex its used in.

Anyone any thoughts?

Thanks

Ps I could just hand them over as the sites not built yet, but the big boys always win and that get on my tits ......

This may help:

http://www.legalcentre.co.uk/ecommerce/guide/domain-name-rights/


However, if you have registered the domain name in order to run a site that is specific to another brand name/organisation rather than one which has no connection other than just a similar name, then they could be within their rights to request the name, or at worst sue you for it.

As an example you can look at Nissan.com, That actually belongs to a small family owned business that builds and sells computers. The owners name just happens to be Mr Uzi Nissan. You can read chapter and verse about it on the nissan.com website, but the end result is that Nissan Motors have taken it all the way to the US supreme court and still lost, but its still not over yet.

If I started a site called "this weeks best deals at tesco.com" designed to guide people how to make the most out of shopping at tesco, while I may be doing people a favour, and also helping tesco, I would be receiving visitors to my site (and possibly selling advertising space on a very popular site) made possible by the brand name of another organisation - i.e. piggybacking off their success to make money for myself. Tesco would have a legal claim to that site name, as I am using their brand name not by chance, but specifically.

Just to confirm, Im no legal expert on these matters, and have gleaned my understanding from cases such as the Nissan Vs Nissan and other similar texts, but my advice would be to tread carefully if you are using another organisations name on purpose to develop a site discussing that organisation.

Hope this helps RRS 3.0D HSE 11MY - Fuji White, a few extras.

I think thats why B&Q have got diy.com, someone got in there first with the B&Q name.

Nah, thats because the ampersand is a reserved character in the html language and cant be used in domain names. bandq.com redirects to diy.com. RRS 3.0D HSE 11MY - Fuji White, a few extras.