Page 1 of Trading names, U.S/U.K...

My wife has finally come up with a name for her home-run business but on searching the web we`ve found a U.S. company with the same name who own the ".com" domain name...

Does anyone know if this would stop us using the name in the U.K for a ".co.uk" website? The domain name is currently free. The exisiting U.S. company and my wife`s products are totally different. Would we have to register the name and create a limited company to avoid any problems?

Cheers

julianf

This item was edited on Sunday, 21st March 2004, 20:19

Trademarks do not cross international borders, so as long as it isn`t a trademark here in the UK, nothing at all.

Editor
DVD REVIEWER

It doesn`t matter in the slightest, as long as your product is not the same, otherwise they could claim that you are trading off their name. There are several companies that have the same name in different countries but offer a massive range of services. www.atkins.com is now the page for the well known diet, but used to belong to joan atkins or someone who did something bizarre like sock embroidery, and she had a disclamer about the fact that there are something like 25 companies called `atkins` that offer a range of services etc. and that she had every right to own atkins.com. Looks like she has sold out know though!!

UC
_____________________
...some kind of superstar*

Theres also the case of the World Wrestling Federation and the World Wildlife Fund and the battle for the WWF.com website addy....in the end the multi billionaire wrestling tycoon backed down and changed the addy (and the name of the company in the process) The World Wildlife Fund wanted to stop any confusion over the two organisations - ie someone wanting to donate to the fund and searching for it only to find a bunch of wrestling sites, I can only assume that the World Wildlife Fund were slow off the mark in joining the internet revolution and even though the World Wrestling Federation were first to use the WWF.com addy the World Wildlife Fund had registered the WWF abreviation worldwide first

ironic realy because even now with the wrestling company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment and using the new addy WWE.com, WWF.com is still a wrestling site.... :/

Yes, in my day WWF only ever meant saving Pandas. Ask a kid today and they will talk about stone cold Steve austin or whatever. I don`t think that one was as much about the website, as the fact that WWF had meant wildlife long before that American wrestling rc[at]p came along - back in the day of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Proper Wrestling. :D

UC
_____________________
...some kind of superstar*

The actual history to the wwf domain rights (if ANYONE`S remotely interested) is that yankee fruits (I agree - he may have a girl`s name, but give me Shirley Crabtree anyday)asked the panda huggers if they minded them using the abbreviation. Thee panda huggers replied in true moon-maiden fashion that they didn`t as long as they behaved themselves.

Of course they didn`t. They waived the abbreviation around for years until it became quite obvious that people were getting confused. Despite the legal precidents about first use and continuing rights the panda huggers won the name back easily. This left the yankee fruits without a brand as they couldn`t use the abbreviation on tv or the web so they were forced to chnge name altogether.

Says it all really.

Matt

BTW: I do bits of this for a living and I can back up previous answers. If you run a similar business and the business in question has run for longer than you you will likely lose any callenge for it. If however you have been in business longer or it`s a totally different business you have every right to the name PROVIDING it`s not a registered trademark or name. Can`t register coke.co.uk just because your business `happens` to be called the `coke shop`. Even if you are selling coal...

This man blows goats. I have proof....