Domain Name Trademark Infringement

April 20th, 2007
By Noah (news)

Boy, oh, boy. I’ve never been accused of trademark infringement before today. A year or so ago, a buddy of mine and I decided to register nascargang.com and nascargangs.com for an idea he/we had. I say he/we because he’s the racing fan–not me. We had planned to investigate what it took to become a licensed affiliate. Their website is of no help at all to this end. It was put on the back burner as other things in life came along (as they tend to do).

Recently, since we weren’t doing much with the domains, I decided to list them on The Domain Name Aftermarket through GoDaddy.com. I guess I wasn’t expecting much to happen, but if someone wanted to purchase the domain, they’d be able to start a dialog with us about doing so. Nothing did happen until today. The domains were delisted from the auction service after GoDaddy received a trademark infringement letter from a law firm (apparently) representing NASCAR. Even though our domain names weren’t mentioned specifically in the letter, I believe GoDaddy just swept through and dropped anything with “nascar” in it. So, now, I’m not really sure what use the domain name is to us.

Here is the letter sent to GoDaddy.

It brings up issues I may have to face with other domain names I own. I currently own two domain names for local sports teams. Without saying what the names are, they both have the word “colts” or “pacers” in them. My reason for registering these domains was to someday create a fan-site related to the teams. There are many fan-sites out there that operate freely because they only seek to support the team and increase the fanbase. My hope is that any actions I take on these domains will be perceived similarly. I’ve even made a few requests of the Colts organization about their rules for fan-sites and what is/isn’t allowed.

Unfortunately, I have received no response (and this was well before all the superbowl hysteria).

One Response

Friday, April 20, 2007
Doug Karr

I received a cease letter a few years back when I put up a consulting site at cliintel.com… I still have the domain name but I don’t use it. I was okay with taking the site down… it wasn’t really being used. But I’m not giving up the domain without a fight. I wonder if AA can sue every business that has 2 ‘A’s in their URLs!

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