Domain / Trademark ?
 

So I see this week the domain Meridia.com sold for $18,000

So I'm thinking WTF is "meridia"?

So I learn that Meridia is a trademark used for the drug sibutramine.

So I was wondering why the company (Abbott Laboratories) that owns the trademark to "Meridia" wouldn't just sue the owners of meridia.com to get their trademarked name back to its rightful owners. Why did this domain sell in the open market?

Then I checked and noticed that meridia.com was registered on Jan 26, 1996, but the company that owns the trademark didn't register the trademark until October 21, 1997

So this person actually owned the domain name before Abbott Laboratories got the trademark for it.

Abbot Laboratories has revenues of about $19 Billion a year and the company is worth about $71.5 Billion

Questions:

1. Did Abbott Laboratories buy the domain this week, and if so, what the hell took them so long to acquire this domain?

2. Why would anyone register a trademark without first owning the domains associated with the trademark? I know it was back in '97 and the internet wasn't as big of a thing back then, but trademark lawyers should have known better.

3. Does this mean that if you register a domain, and then later some other company gets the trademark for that word, they can't successfully sue you to get control of the domain because you owned the domain before they registered the trademark?

good post :thumbsup

i'm really interested to know the answer to this as well

2. Why would anyone register a trademark without first owning the domains associated with the trademark? I know it was back in '97 and the internet wasn't as big of a thing back then, but trademark lawyers should have known better. <--- wrong.

'99? sure. '97? not so much. sure people were getting clueful, but not to the degree that you'd think.

You think it was acceptable for professional trademark lawyers (which I assume they had) working for a huge pharmaceutical company to overlook who owns the domains to the trademarks?

If anyone should have known, it should have been them. That is their business. That's why you pay them $500 an hour.

If I hired trademark lawyers in '97 to manage the trademark process for me and they failed to tell me that someone already owned the .com domain for that trademark, I'd sue them for being incompetent.

hmm this is really good. cause i sort of own a domain that an un-named clothing company/rap artist is threatening to sue me for. they have no trademark to the name and i believe they were attempting to trademark it but saw I had a pending trademark to the domain name.

so far i've received two letters from there lawyer threatening to sue if i don't give up both domains and abandon the trademark. i spoke to an internet lawyer and they said i have a good case. frankly they would of had a better chance getting the domain if they would of contacted me without lawyers. Would of probably gave it up for a signed CD or something like that. now, i'm pretty much pissed and will fight to maintain it just because... they're demanding something that doesn't legal belong to them and if i have to spend money to prove i do legally own it, i'll sue for my attorney fee and the time wasted.

so far i've been really polite to the attorney when responding my letter. I really would like to just go off on him citing all the facts he's overlooked and that i have the power to legal process that pending trademark and really fuck them over. since the US trademark office cleared my pending trademark and all that is need is one minor change. but, i'm standing my ground and being polite.

p.s. my site has nothing to do with the artist and i'm not making any money from it or tricking people into thinking i'm associated with them.

udrp's are in style - to sue is so 90's :spawn

a lot of the answers depend on what somebody does with the domain, such as meridia.com

the pharm company can wait and see in good faith and udrp anytime if they have a good faith belief they are getting fucked. protecting intellectual property is serious business so if a trademark owner is crabby about a particular domain and wants to "go after" the domain- things can get hairy for the party who owns the disputed domain in a rapid fashion.

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trademark domains
 

owning a trademark doesnt neccesarily mean you can own the .com

There is a time period on trademarks, i rememeber this being a friend of the owner of i think it was digitalhome.com domain

digital home company tried sueing him for the domain, theyre trade mark was registerd some 3 years prior, and it got nowhere fast, they tried all the threats and never even went to a court I dont believe.

I think the law is like some 7 years the trademark has to be in existance, before they could do something like that, funny thing is 3 years later he just recently i seen sold the domain for like 7k

I wonder if he knew the time was up and he could now lose it ;)

also i like to note that, like the domain was just registered, and like im guessing the date of registration would affect the trademark rights, so if oyu went and registered it now, and its already been 7 years taht has been trademarked then yes you can lose it, but no can someone trademark something and then get it from you, however if they did trademark the name and your using it in keywords and stuff, then you can be liable...

great post It's been awhile since I dabbled just in the domain world but stuff like this always interests me

Many factors determine what a trademark owner can and can't do in this situation (for instance, what the domain is used for). Date of registeration is definitely significant. It goes on a case by case basis. Recently, it's become more difficult for trademark holders to enforce it when it comes to domains (probably due to a lot of ridiculous claims being brought to court over such issues).

just bumping for more feedback

:glugglug

Good job on not allowing lawyers to scare you into giving it up. Especially if they have no registered trademark for the name.

If you check archive.org, it seems meridia.com was being used for something medical related, but not exactly the same. Seems there was a company called Meridia Health Systems which ran hospitals in Ohio.

This is Meridia.com in 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/199611102...w.meridia.com/

Does anyone know who bought the domain Meridia.com this week? Was it Abbot?

It doesn't look like the Whois info has changed yet