Earning From Parking a Trademarked Domain Name?

[yanhuang]

I have a buddy who has a trademarked domain name and earns a high XX to low XXX per month from parking it. I wanted to find out since he has not developed a website with the actual trademark and he does not have any intentions of selling it, what are the chances of the trademark owners going after him and suing him? And legally, does he have any protection since he isn't selling the website nor developing an actual website using their trademark?

[Maxwell]

I have a buddy who has a trademarked domain name and earns a high XX to low XXX per month from parking it. I wanted to find out since he has not developed a website with the actual trademark and he does not have any intentions of selling it, what are the chances of the trademark owners going after him and suing him? And legally, does he have any protection since he isn't selling the website nor developing an actual website using their trademark?

Do not take this as legal advice.

Even though he isn't seeking to sell the domain name/website, the fact that he is profiting off of it can be construed as bad faith.

If he's making decent money off of parking, that tells me that the mark is popular enough that people are looking for it in its trademarked meaning.

Therefore, the trademark holder is likely to catch on soon enough. The question is, does the trademark holder have rights to this name?

This is something I would advise speaking with a TM attorney about. Parked TM risk names are very risky business. And this is exactly why names of mine which may be seen as controversial in nature do not earn any money. Because I do not want to run the chance of losing the name for the wrong reason.

[Mark Talbot]

What is the minimum court-awarded loss on a successful tm case? 150k now or something?

Takes alot of parking rev to make it worthwhile the effort, no?

[Maxwell]

What is the minimum court-awarded loss on a successful tm case? 150k now or something?

Takes alot of parking rev to make it worthwhile the effort, no?

Again, do not take this as legal advice.

Some (if not most) companies would rather pay the legal fees than pay off a domainer. This is why anything which you know for a fact is an indisputable trademark is a VERY bad idea to own.

But if there is a logical generic meaning to it, there is certainly a possibility that you'll have a case. But you won't get away with this owning, say, Microsoft.com, or Verizon.com.