Canadian Trademarks

[theinvestor]

I have a question regarding Trademark for a .ca domain.

When doing a little research it shows that the trademark has been abandoned. I am curious if under CIRA that the company can come after me for owning the .ca. The .com is still developed and the .ca was dropped.

So, to be safe...what can i do to prevent them from coming after me?

If anything...

[Belzibut]

I'm not 100% sure but I think you can own any name as long as you don't use it to sell the same product / service as the one with the trademark. You could have a company called Telus Contracting using telus.ca and telus.com couldn't take it away from you. I guess if you owned toysareus.ca and try to sell sex toys, you would probably get in trouble.

Would like to know for sure as well.

D

[onlinestoreca]

From my understanding, I am not a lawyer and going by memory, they can still claim the name at any time, especially if it is not generic.

They would have to use a lawyer to reacquire the name so it's a pain in the ass for them to drop the name and get it back, but they should win.

The exception would be if the name is generic. Then you could set up a website using the generic reason and they would have to be far more convincing that they deserved the name. If you picked up PeanutButter.ca and sold peanut butter you should be okay.

BUT I believe that I read that Apple Inc. would still have more rights to apple.com over an apple farmer grabbing the name because it's a huge business identity, as wrong as that seems to me.

If you picked up a name like BurgerKing.ca I don't think you would have a prayer IF they wanted it back.

[theinvestor]

What if the name is two generic words put together?

I guess companies have an advantage over a domainer.

[onlinestoreca]

Originally Posted by theinvestor

What if the name is two generic words put together?

I guess companies have an advantage over a domainer.

You mean like "Burger" "King". I don't think you would have a chance. However if you can get it for $10 and make more than that in a year from PPC or whatever, and then negotiate with them if they want it back for $1000, it might be worth it -jmho.

[liberator]

I recently ran into an issue where a generic word was being utilized by a company. First I would register a business using the websites name, $60 fee, then make sure that your products and/or services are not confusingly similar to the ones offered by the company.

If you want to be even further along register a trademark for the words based on your products and services, costs about $800.

That will give you more weight in the event they try and take the name IMO. I'm by no means a lawyer though just passing along advice I received.

Cheers,

Jay

[dobes399]

Originally Posted by liberator

... register a business using the websites name, $60 fee ...

Sounds interesting. How do you do that?

[Belzibut]

I guess if the domain is verizon dot ca then register Verizon Gardening Inc. or whatever your business will do. You can do it online, search for register business name.

Would be nice to have a domain lawyer on this thread.

D.