Thoughts on trademarks, domain names, Twitter names...

This short note is a response to Technologizer’s blog post. I usually do not post blog responses here, but although I generally like and enjoy reading Technologizer, in this case, I disagree rather strongly with Mr. McCracken’s views on trademarks, domain names, Twitter names, and cyber-squatting, so here it goes…

CONTINUE >>> A trademark is assigned to a company in a specific category, which does not preclude another company’s use of the same name (or another person’s registration of eponymous domain name, if it is still available) as long as there is no deliberate confusion. There are companies in the construction business that have the word ADOBE in their name, and any of them would have the same claim to the domain name adobe.com, or the name Adobe on twitter, as Adobe, the software company, if they had registered it first.

Having legal rights to a registered trademark does not AUTOMATICALLY give a company the same rights (or in fact any legal claim) to a web domain of the same name, or the same denomination on, say, social network websites. Similarly, registering a domain for a common noun (e.g., roadster), or commonly occurring proper, geographic, etc. name (say, McDonald, or Columbia, or Saturn) is not necessarily “cyber-squatting.”

In this time and age, if a big, multi-billion international company (especially in the tech business) doesn’t have enough marketing savvy to register their name (web domains, twitter names, or whatever-other-social-network-du-jour user names) before someone else does, they should be prepared to pay for it, or make do without, and not whine. They should also consider firing their VP of Marketing, and hiring a competent one instead.