xbox and trademarks
 

Just a warning for those of you that run x box sites and use xbox in your domain name. Seems microsucks is starting to enforce their trade mark and trying to get domains pulled.

I haven't been contacted personally but I had a domain that was parked with sedo that is a 2001 domain and orginally used a bondage site domain. I just received a e-mail from sedo telling me the domain was pulled from their system due to trade market violation.

I called sedo just to see who made the complaint because there are so many well known established sites that use the term xbox, I found it funny to think they would just now start this 7 years after the launch of their system.

Seems it is microsucks and he said they are starting to become aggressive on their xbox trademark. So if you have a gaming site using that term I'd expect them to contact you.

Just a side note some very popular sites using xbox in the domain that maybe at risk.

xbox-scene.com
xbox-linux.org
smashmyxbox.com
teamxbox.com
planetxbox.com

Being my domain was a actual site piror to the launch of Xbox (not owned by me) I think I could fight it if they do contact me about it. I Haven't decided if it's worth it to do so being I'm not actively using the domain for anything important. Xbox didn't go live until late 2001 and there is a archive.org copy of a site on my domain from Jun 15, 2001. The biggie is mircosoft registered their first trademark on the term xbox in 2000.

Seems it would do them a lot of harm to start taking down sites like Teamxbox. The community there is pretty big. I wouldn't be surprised if they leave them alone and just go after squatters and parkers. Although you never can tell.

Yea I'm thinking that as well. So I'm debating if I should get a community style site up on the domain as I feel it's a pretty nice domain IMO. Very brand-able I just never got around to getting a site back up on it. As a side note I wonder if that would do them harm by targeting only specific sites if they all deal in the same thing.

bump.. anyone who is good at trademark stuff have a good way to handel this? I'm sure that the next thing they will try to do is take the domain.

Being the domain did have a site on it piror to the launch of X box and was totally unrelated to the game console, I think I should have a leg to stand on. The draw back is I've have the domain parked the last 4 years.