Law-Forums.org

[blaeey]

I have a website that I want to create, however the domain is listed for sale for a lottttt of money through fabulous.com. I've done a search and a patent does not exist on the name "blablah.com" so my question is... can I register "blahblah.com" as a trademark name even if I do not own the web domain?

if so, does that domain name technically infringes on my copyright? and can I acquire the web domain through legal means if that is the case?

I would put an offer on the site, but it is for much more than I would be willing to spend, so I am curious as to if i can acquire it through other means.

thanks for your time

[gall]

Patents, copyrights and trademarks come from completely different laws -- each protecting different things. A name can be a trademark. Use of that name as a trademark in one business by no means implies that it cannot be used by others in an unrelated business. Even if the trademark is registered, the registration only applies to prevent others from using a similar trademark in a related field.

Because we have no idea what business you're in, there is no possible way to determine who, if anyone, would infringe your trademark, were you to have one.

Why not simply register in a different top-level domain? For instance, instead of Blahblah.com you register Blahblah.org, or Blahblah.info, or Blahblah.tv, or Blahblah.anythingelse? Surely one or more of those is also for sale.

Another common dodge is to register Blah-Blah.com rather than Blahblah.com, or This-is-the-real-BLAHBLAH.com, or BlahBlah-NumberONe.com and so forth, each of which is a unique name.

[dubh35]

for @Pfo, "trademark" is not a verb.

[garwyli91]

You can't patent a website, you can trademark a name though.

You can try to trademark blahblah, and if successful you have a case to claim that the person is squatting your domain, but since they got there first legitimately, before your name was trademarked, you will have to buy it from them.