{"id":18007,"date":"2011-01-25T05:51:10","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T13:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/?p=18007"},"modified":"2011-01-29T15:39:30","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T23:39:30","slug":"eminent-domain-name-what-to-do-when-your-brand-is-coveted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/198.46.88.49\/electrotech\/eminent-domain-name-what-to-do-when-your-brand-is-coveted","title":{"rendered":"Eminent Domain Name: What To Do When Your Brand Is Coveted"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n Late last week, Erin Kleinberg, Stephanie Mark and Jake Rosenberg launched a new fashion blog. The design was solid, the content striking and the concept – a peek inside the closets of fashion editors and insiders – met with enthusiasm. The name, however, was met with raised eyebrows. The Coveted<\/a> is a fashion blog that focuses on Jennine Jacob’s personal style. Over the years, it’s been hosted on a blogspot URL, thecoveted.net and currently resides at the-coveted.com<\/strong>.<\/p>\n As of last week, The Coveted is also<\/a> the aforementioned newly launched fashion blog, which resides at thecoveted.com<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Confused? Many fashion blog readers were when they realized that the blog at thecoveted.com (no hyphen) was not affiliated with Jacob’s existing blog (the-coveted.com), which has been using the name since 2007.<\/p>\n “Someone owned thecoveted.com for a long time, and did nothing with it,” says Jacob. “When the domain changed hands, I figured it might be a shop or another shopping portal, but certainly not a fashion blog.”<\/p>\n Every major fashion brand has had an experience with someone infringing on their brand online. While The Coveted confusion marks the first case we’ve seen in media, it’s hardly the only recent example of brands colliding over the rights to a web name.<\/p>\n Facebook currently has a lawsuit pending against TeachBook<\/a>, an online community for teachers, and Lamebook<\/a>, a humor blog that posts anonymized screenshots of Facebook users’ status updates. The reason? Facebook asserts that the inclusion of the word “book” dilutes their brand.\u00c2\u00a0Teachbook successfully trademarked the name, withstanding a challenge by Facebook.\u00c2\u00a0Both sites have refused to change their site names, but other sites have when threatened with legal action by Facebook.<\/p>\n So where does that leave the site owner who wants to protect against competitors who borrow a brand name full stop, as well as Goliath companies who have large legal teams? Simply put, it depends on the situation.<\/p>\n Roman Fichman is a New York based attorney who works with startups<\/a>, and says “owners of trademarks are required<\/em> to protect their registered marks from unauthorized use or from use that may dilute their mark, otherwise they stand to lose the protections and rights that are afforded to them.” He notes that to the average user, sometimes “this does not ‘jive’ with common sense.”<\/p>\n