Any lawyers out there?

Melissa

Melissa

Inactive Member
Thanks to Patty from Newf-Net and everybody's encouragement I have decided to open up a little online store for all of Emily's pictures and hopefully be doing personalized pictures for other people. Patty suggested a website for me that prints everything from coffee mugs to woman's thongs! :eek: (You must be a real die hard dog lover to get your dogs picture printed on your underwear
)
Anyway, I am working on a website and have decided to name the store "The Digital Dog"
The domain name is available and I did a trademark search and it seems to be free. However I have found some other business named Digital dog.
So my question is...By adding the word "the" in there or the fact that I am not selling the same products as them border on any infringement laws? I tried looking this up on commonlaw.com but they were not very specific. Thanks again
 
Khiori

Khiori

New member
You'd need to watch for two things in this. A Cease and Desist letter from the other company. We got one of those on one of our products and ended up with a BETTER name ;) The other would be to file a DBA within your county. Your local newspaper will be able to help file that. It's good for five years and is reasonable in price (I think we paid $50? They filed it, we filled out a form) That way in the future if there is a dispute, you can prove you were using the name within certain dates.

You could also alter the name to be "Digital Doggie" and that's different enough. In my case, we were using an exact name at the time for the same product. What were the odds?
Actually, it was a product that you could probably use in your venture lol. I'll PM you what it is if you are interested.
 
Melissa

Melissa

Inactive Member
Thanks, yes PM me, how interesting this all is.
Well, I was wrong once again. I cannot use the digital dog, it is taken and registered. The digital dogs is available but just to close for me.I have something else in mind that is available and I found a free trademark search site. Digital doggie is even taken.

I did find the answer to my question under findlaw.com Thanks for the helpful info about the DBA

ANSWER:
As a general rule, trademarks do not infringe one another if the underlying products or services of the two companies do not compete and are not distributed in the same trade channels.
 
Zatara and Merrick's Mom

Zatara and Merrick's Mom

New member
I'm not a lawyer so I could definitely be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that you can re-use the name as long as it has not already been used in your state of operation (i.e. FL). fwiw.
 
IrishMist428

IrishMist428

New member
YEAH ! ! I am so glad you are looking into this. As I said there is plenty of Newfie stuff out there, but nothing like your work. At least I have not seen it. Can you use Softpaws Digital Doggie ? Well, I do wish you the best of luck and count me in as a buyer. OH MY I didn't know they had thongs. :eek:
 
Ivoryudx

Ivoryudx

New member
Just a word of caution on doing the name search for a domain name. There are people out there monitoring your searches and will buy those names out from under you, if you don't immediately purchase them, so they can try to sell them to you at a higher price.

Good Luck!
Susan
 
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