CountryName.com - Can I trademark this?

[brianluedke]

A couple of years ago, I tried to trademark Sénégal.com (Senegalese spelling in their official language, French). The U.S. gov't turned me down, on the grounds that geographic domains cannot be registered.

Do you think they would let me trademark RDCongo.com?

As a refresher, there are two countries named Congo: the République du Congo (usually simply called "Congo", or, to avoid any confusion, "Congo-Brazzaville"). Then there is the République démocratique du Congo (usually called "RD Congo" for brevity's sake). This one is the big Congo.

"RD Congo" has more than four million Google results (and the English version, "DR Congo", has another 2.5 million), suggesting that "RD Congo" is the universally used short form of this country's name.

Do you think I could trademark RDCongo.com? It is not exactly the official long form, and it's not what the typical bureaucrat would probably recognize as the only short form he knows, i.e. "Congo".