Quote:
Originally Posted by TripleXPrint
A competitor bought a bunch of variations of my domain and also possible mistypes. He has landing pages using my domain as keywords and linking to his website, which offers the exact same content. I contacted him nicely and asked him to remove them and his response was extremely childish.
Is this copyright infringement? It's a unique name and business, so he did it out of sheer spite (I know the douche bag that is doing it). I just found out today so I can't contact my attorney. What say you, GFY? Should I send a C&D and if so, do I have any ground to stand on?
|
I think previous responses have been somewhat accurate in pointing out that this is a matter of TradeMark rather than Copyright. However It is entirely not true that you had to register a trademark to be protected you can claim trademark based on evidence, although it always helps if you have had something registered. The real challenge is proving that variation of your name is violation of trademark and this is not as easy When it comes to domain names, the issue becomes a bit more complex, for instance Sonny electronics is a well known brand and then we have SUNNY ELECTRONICS
http://www .sunnyelectronics.com.au/ there is website tooorgle .com a torrent search engine that mimics google. Furthermore there is the issue of TLD, even if you have a registered trademark and you can prove that the use of other domain constitutes trademark abuse, The Territory of the Trademark is a question in itself, is your trademark protected in Russia (.RU domain) China(cn domain) ?etc.
As to providing similar content, unless the other website is providing the exact copy or product built off your secret/patented design, it wont constitute IP violation as you cant protect an Idea.
As to sending C&D notices, you can, if you wish to go to court, as you can use it as an evidence that you went down all avenues and it wouldn't work. However should they prove you wrong that is an evidence that you were wrongfully accusing someone of something they did not do.
I am sorry if this post does not help you directly but I felt it might be beneficial to give you the full picture.