RE: UKNM: Letsbuyit.com - On A Loser?

[Ben Metcalfe]

I think your point about buying up possible sound-alikes is a valid one.

However, .com domains are available for less than £30, .nets/.orgs for less

than £20 and .co.uk's for £5.  Buying up domains which in the hands of

pranksters (or more importantly competition) would be detrimental to your

business is a sound, prudent and inexpensive exercise.


The extent to which you should go depends on the type of business you run,

but go as far as your budget will stretch.  Many suffixes can be added to a

brand to form a new domain, but the ones I would feel concerned about if I

was www.funplay.com (an example toy company) would be:


funplayuk.com

funplay-uk.com

funplayonline.com

funplay-online.com

funplaynet.com

funplay-net.com

fun-play.com


(There are many others, some which may/may not be appropriate to your

business, like my* and *ltd).


My choice for the above is basically down to the fact that copyright laws

may not win you the rights to these domains.  uk, online, net and

hyphenation are all generic and could be argued that they are not similar to

the original domain.


However, if a funplay was a toy company and someone registered

funplaytoys.com, I believe funplay would have grounds under

copyright/trademark as the domain contains their name and their type of

business.  Therefore it would not be necessary for them to register this

domain as they could use the courts to win control.


To sum up - buy domains which you think would prove detrimental to your

business if owned by someone else, but are not similar enough to your

trademarks to enable you to pursue a legal-based challenge on them, should

they be registered.


Ben Metcalfe ::: Human Being

0208 225 8192


-----Original Message-----

From: Sarah Clelland [

sarah [dot] clellandsnowvalley [dot] com (mailto:sarah [dot] clellandsnowvalley [dot] com)

]

Sent: 22 September 2000 11:58

To:

uk-netmarketingchinwag [dot] com

Subject: UKNM: Letsbuyit.com - On A Loser?



I read somewhere yesterday that letsbuyit.com are buying up lots of

domain names such as letsbuyshit.com or letsbuyitsucks.com etc. etc.

to prevent some japester comandeering them.


Does this scream 'what a futile exercise' at anyone else, or is it just

me? Anyone who wants to wax lyrical about the less positive aspects of

letsbuyit.com's service will just think of a name that they haven't

bought. And it's ripe for the picking as well - letsdissit.com,

letsslagitoff.com (I could go on, but I won't.)


Is this sort of thing common practice? And if you're going to go on a

spending spree like this, surely you're better off finding out what

people mistakenly type in when they're searching for your site - like

lets-buy-it.com etc.?


Sarah Clelland

Snow Valley

www.snowvalley.com

020 7250 1056



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