Trademark Due Diligence Is Critical Before Going into Any Business

A recent domain dispute decision highlights the importance of doing a trademark clearance search before picking any business, brand or product name.  The Parking Page Dilemma: Frank Schilling loses chillibeans.com domain under UDRP, illustrates that both courts and arbitration panels expect companies to proactively ensure that they are not infringing on someone else’s trademark rights and/or prior trademark registrations before picking a domain name.

There are three lessons every domainer --  at least those who are willing to deal with the legal realities under the UDRP and ACPA  --  should take from this decision. (1) do a trademark search for every valuable domain within your portfolio, (2) exclude ads to the extent you can from being served up on your parked pages which include products in trademark protected areas and (3) consider excluding your most valuable domains from parking programs all together (they are worth more 'for sale' than from parked revenue).