Potential Liability for a Newly Purchased Domain

Before you buy a domain name, especially an acronym, check to see what is currently being displayed on the website to make sure it’s not infringing on another company’s mark. If you buy a domain name that had infringed on a company’s mark in the past, you could be held liable for the domain name’s past use.

Take this as an example. You decide you want to buy a great 3 letter .com domain name. You search Google for acronyms just to see how it could be used, and you find out that a major technology company is sometimes known by the acronym. When you check the domain name, the current landing page has this company’s ads (or a competitor’s). This could put a new owner in harm’s way.

Not only do I look at the current landing page and ask the owner about the landing page history, I also do some research to see what was on the page previously. I like to use Archive.org to see what was previously displayed on a website. It’s always better to ask questions to gauge potential risk down the road.

Other articles of interest:

1. Possible Liability for “Holding” Domains Are domain registrants unknowingly taking risks with their domain names...
2. Make $50,000 With One End User Sale Per Week on Newly Registered Domain Names Don’t worry… despite the title of this post, I am...
3. Names I’ve Recently Purchased As I’ve done in the past, I want to share...