Very interesting thread with many different opinions ;-)

Like PipeCrew said try to make some money offering them to settle right now. Tell them you never intented to even have a site looking like there's or bank off their image and that you would at least like to get some money back, since you did beleive you where not infringing anyone and invested time and money to develop bloxbuster.com

Attached to that email a picture of a puppy, this should win their heart and make you a few bucks.. lolol ;-)

That is a total bullshit letter. They have no case. They are claiming that it is an intential miss spelling. an intentional miss spelling would be blockbster.com or something similar to that. blox and block are not even close.

I would put emphesis on your site around the word "blox" like maybe that is your nick name or it means something non related to renting movies.

No one is typing in bloxbuster trying to get to blockbuster no one is seeing bloxbuster on a SE and thinking it is blockbuster. You are not making any money off of their fame because, you are not renting or selling movies, they have no case.

absolutly does not matter 1 bit. All he has to say is his Nick Name from High school was " blox" and he can get 10 friends to confirm this. Or any other reason for use of the name. They don't know what his intentions where, only what the evidence is he will show.

I wonder how many of you telling him to give it over have been through a TM case for a domain name. I have and my name was the SAME as their trademark, and it was a .net and they even owned the .com . I got my attorney involved and they eventually bought it from me. And it was large US company. Each case is different, but unless you have gone through it, I wouldn't be suggesting to give it over so easy.

There is nothing wrong with him asking " what do you think I should do here". GFY is not 100% morons. Some people have gone through similar cases and can provide feedback to him, it is not like he started a poll and Yes / No should I give it to them or fight it and he will go with which ever gets the most votes.
Just because he is asking for advice does not mean he has to use it. :2 cents:

Good to see some clever response.

Indeed. Thanks everyone, I'll keep you posted ;)

Yes, and they will pay it. I had a dispute with Lexus for several weeks that likely cost Lexus several thousand dollars but they will do it.
WG

Lexus didn't pay a cent...the shareholders did :)

i would get the trademark for bloxbuster! :)

See how much they are willing to pay you for the domain.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

First intelligent post in this thread.

Excellent advice.

You can also go for 10k and see how much they offer in return.

If they really want they can take it from you. It will cost them though. So why not make some money on it.

On a side note..Looks like you regsitered bloxbuster.com a few months before they registered blockbuster.com.
You registered in 2003 right?
Doublecheck these things and investigate when they licensed the trademark. Especially for the Benelux.
You may still need to turn it over but a lawyer should be able to get you a nice compensation for the work you did on the site.

You are from Belgium, right. I did a research here

http://oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline/Requ...n_Result_NoReg
(just type in blockbuster into the trademark name field)
and got 9 results. The one most dangerous for you is trademark #002045391 which was filed in 2001 and - that´s interesting - was registered in 2004.

Your problem is that the trademark is also registered in Nice class 41 for "providing digital images from the internet". So your domain name could be hurting the trademark.

To be sure, contact a trademark lawyer in belgium. But most likely, you will lose that fight. And be careful asking them for money to transfer the domain. That could cause some bigger problems for you because European trademark law punishes this if you registered the domain illegally, for example just to profit from the trademark owners reputation.

I´m not familiar with the law in Belgium, but it´s pretty much the same in all European countries which belong to the EU.

a udrp does not cost an arm and a leg btw. less than $5k for them.

well ............. give it to me and I will deal with them, like I did with "the queen of sky" and others.

Not legal advice but Fish & Richardson (a large intellectual property law firm) indicated to us that we couldn't trademark Webcams.com due to it being a generic name (although we could trademark logos, specific phrases, etc). I don't see why blockbuster would be any different since it was a generic word well before Blockbuster Video came along.

you could have gone on the supplemental for a separate category and then tried to move it onto the principle registry later :2 cents:

Tell them to send their wives over to touch your peepee.

You can´t register a term which is generic, that´s right. So you can´t register the term "webcam" for a webcam business. But you can for example for a car.

Generally speaking a trademark consists of two important parts. The first is the term itself. The other is the Nice classification, which describes the variaty of products the term is protected for.

BLOCKBUSTER is registered first in 1985 in Europe and now consists of a large variety of terms related with BLOCKBUSTER or containing BLOCKBUSTER.

So the chances are good that they can turn down the domain bloxbuster. Anyway, fighting in this case will be pretty expensive and it´s only woth it if the guy makes a decent amount of money with this domain.

I can´t tell you at this time if the guy is safe or not, because there are many facts missing to judge the case. But at least I can tell you that it could become a problem for sure.

As i told before, he should contact a trademark lawyer in Belgium to be sure. And he should contact the lawyer BEFORE talking to the trademark owner´s law firm.

Write a good press release, attach their letter and send it to every news media you can think of !

With luck you will make the news and traffic will start pooring in like crazy, soon you will be billionair on bloxbuster due to this and much bigger than blockbuster.. Then you hire a great team of lawyers and sue them for having a name too close to yours *problem solved*

mmmm.. well if Blockbuster were so intent on the name why did they not buy it for the $11 or so fee and avoid this hassle, it has become too easy now days for a big company to say "Hey that is too close to my name I want it" let's be honest if everyone tried to claim every name close to their domain we would all be in litigation....

Trade it for an xbox like Mike Rowe
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/interne...oft.settle.ap/

Seriously though here are a couple ideas...

1.) Let all your bookmarkers know you are moving your free porn to another domain, then in a week or two, signup with the affiliate program of blockbuster.com and push their program with your leftover traffic. This way you are not profiting off of their name recognition in any competitive manner.

2.) Sell your porn site and let the next owner deal with it.

3.) Sell the domain name on ebay.

No matter what you need to be looking at capitalizing monetarily off of your time invested in the domain. Don't hand it over, if worse comes to worse, offer it to them for like $50k or something... after all that is like maybe 1 minute of their daily sales revenue.

DO NOT TAKE THIS ADVICE!!

If they dont take you up on it, they will use this at trial to alledge that you are in violation of The Anti Cybersquatting Act as you tried to sell it to them. I had a company pull this BS on me once, it cost me the domain and the case.

Best bet: Send a scan of the letter in to chillingeffects.org and do nothing. Wait for the summons to arrive. Or if you were me, you'd send them a very politely worded letter that says "you'll have to sue me".

Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVE THEM THE DOMAIN FOR ANY REASON.

tell em to eat a cock then report back what happens

100% correct :thumbsup

No communication in *any* way. It's not a discussion.

The day ya get formal docs which may require signing as a receipt - chuck the lot on a lawyer and tell him to fuck with them.

hehe .. Juicy style :thumbsup

Ok how is it close to Blockbuster - if sounded, it's 'blocksbuster'?
It neither 'sounds' the same - is not a 'misspelling' - nor is it close enough to be a 'typo'... seriously - these lawyers should fight some other worthwhile causes.

Regardless of where you live, don't tread on famous, registered, and distinctive trademarks. It's bad for business.

Delete the domain from your account.

lot of mixed feelings in this thread