a .com domain i want is taken but not trademark. a site isnt really up for the .com, just some godaddy ads or contents relevant to the domain.
so, the .net is available. if i take it and use it, and trademark it some time from now (lets say a year). would i have anything to be worried about, being that the other guy had the .com domain first? can he somehow void my trademark because he had the domain first?[LIST]
[/LIST]
Nissan, the car manufacturer, does not own nissan.com. Someone else owned it before them. Their trademark on the Nissan brand for selling cars is not void because someone had nissan.com before them, and they can’t use their trademark to get nissan.com either as it’s not being used to sell cars.
Trademarks are not ownership rights to words, they are protection of words or marks used to identify a brand in a specific line of commerce.
Could they void your mark? That depends. If you try to trademark something competitive to an existing business they can certainly challenge it, and if they can prove it isn’t unique, or is infringing on their use of the name (common law mark) that’s a problem.
If nothing is being done I see that as less of an issue than the owner deciding to try and piggyback off your site down the road when you develop it. Having a trademark will help you if they change their field of focus to do this but a trademark won’t protect you on it’s own, you would have to actually go out and try to enforce it.