Domains & Trademarks

[stu567blue]

Hi Everyone,

I posted this early on the Tech Forum, hope I don't get into to much trouble posting again on here.

A really quick, and hopefully, easy question.

There are a couple of domains that I would like to buy. Both the domains are available on the open market, and are no longer registered to a company or an individual. However, I've also done further research and found that there is a trademark still active.

I delved further and found that the company that once owned the domain names and the trademark has since been dissolved.

If I were to register the domain names, would there be anything stopping me? Could the owners of the trademark come back and ask me to do anything i.e pay a beneficial fee etc?

Any thoughts on this would be great.

Thank you.

 

[surreyaces]

Is the company that owns the trade mark still active? You say the company that "once" owned the mark has been dissolved, but its not clear to me whether you meant the current owner or a previous owner.

 

[stu567blue]

From what I can tell the trademark was registered in the companies name and that company has gone on to be dissolved. Hope this helps.

 

[surreyaces]

Generally domain names are first-come-first-served and it is usually tricky to wrestle a domain from a third party that has registered it first (unless they have acted in bad faith, i.e. dishonestly). If your intentions for registering the domain are honest, you are likely to be OK. However, the bigger consideration is whether you risk infringing the registered trade mark. The proprietor may be a dissolved company, but it is possible that the trade mark has been assigned to someone else (to avoid it being passed to the crown as bona vacantia) and that the assignment has just not been recorded yet.