If this should be moved to the legal forum, by all means move it....
So I'm working with a band and we're having a bit of an issue with their website name.
We had started working with a very small record label and in the beginings the band, which is a self titled project named after the lead singer, didn't have their own website/domain name, just the myspace type pages. The label offered to register the .com name for her and she didn't realize that meant they own it. She thought they were just helping her out. The domain name is just redirected to the myspace page, which we run and update.
The label is now using this as a "bargining chip" in all negotiations ("if we break up this deal, we still own your website name which people will try to enter to find you and direct them to our site. We'll use it however we choose to use it."). Neither the artist or the label are very big (the artist is bigger than the label actually), but the artist is on the verge of breaking into being something, so we want to get this issue resolved before we have to dish out thousands of dollars to buy this domain name. We are the largest of only 3 acts that this 'new/young' label is currently working with, so if this becomes a major issue for them as it would cripple their reputation of 'being in it for the bands and developing them, not the money'.
While the artists name is not a registered trademark, this artists name/domain name is very unique and specific (If you google search her name in quotes you will get 1840 results, all of which directly relate to her and her music, not one exception....if you search her first name + her last name, you will get 86,000 results and the only ones that don't relate to her in the first 10,000 results or so, are the ones where it is her first name being matched with someones first name in a Isreali government and her last name that relates to someting to do with some a nickname for a jewish organization fighting with this goverment official abotu something...no direct relationship/association between the first and last names in the search results) and this domain is not a general term. The only reason to own this name or domian name is to use it to either profit from her success, or defame her name.
They only have the .com to our knowledge, so we can still register the .ca's and .net's and all that, but .com is the one everyone tries first and the one that we've been marketing for the last 6 months.
Is there anything that can be done about this? Didn't Xerox.com have the same issue before or something? If they keep the ownership of the domain name can we take legal action and have a solid case, or can we limit their use of the name because this name can not be mistaken for a general term or anything like that?
Any help or suggestions would be wonderful!
So I'm working with a band and we're having a bit of an issue with their website name.
We had started working with a very small record label and in the beginings the band, which is a self titled project named after the lead singer, didn't have their own website/domain name, just the myspace type pages. The label offered to register the .com name for her and she didn't realize that meant they own it. She thought they were just helping her out. The domain name is just redirected to the myspace page, which we run and update.
The label is now using this as a "bargining chip" in all negotiations ("if we break up this deal, we still own your website name which people will try to enter to find you and direct them to our site. We'll use it however we choose to use it."). Neither the artist or the label are very big (the artist is bigger than the label actually), but the artist is on the verge of breaking into being something, so we want to get this issue resolved before we have to dish out thousands of dollars to buy this domain name. We are the largest of only 3 acts that this 'new/young' label is currently working with, so if this becomes a major issue for them as it would cripple their reputation of 'being in it for the bands and developing them, not the money'.
While the artists name is not a registered trademark, this artists name/domain name is very unique and specific (If you google search her name in quotes you will get 1840 results, all of which directly relate to her and her music, not one exception....if you search her first name + her last name, you will get 86,000 results and the only ones that don't relate to her in the first 10,000 results or so, are the ones where it is her first name being matched with someones first name in a Isreali government and her last name that relates to someting to do with some a nickname for a jewish organization fighting with this goverment official abotu something...no direct relationship/association between the first and last names in the search results) and this domain is not a general term. The only reason to own this name or domian name is to use it to either profit from her success, or defame her name.
They only have the .com to our knowledge, so we can still register the .ca's and .net's and all that, but .com is the one everyone tries first and the one that we've been marketing for the last 6 months.
Is there anything that can be done about this? Didn't Xerox.com have the same issue before or something? If they keep the ownership of the domain name can we take legal action and have a solid case, or can we limit their use of the name because this name can not be mistaken for a general term or anything like that?
Any help or suggestions would be wonderful!
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