A Non-Lawyer’s Guide To Protecting Your Brand With Your URL

“I just thought of a brilliant name for my new service, which combines two of my most popular areas. Nobody’s using it, but it’s registered with a service that’s demanding $10K. I’m not ready to pay that much. I’m also wondering if I should trademark the name. But I also realize that if somebody uses the I’ll have to pay even more to protect it. But it IS such a great name…”

This question was posted to an online forum, and it’s one that come up often when you’re marketing your business online.

I’m not a lawyer, so nothing I say should be considered legal advice. But I’ve dealt with this problem many times, for myself and my clients.

From a marketing, non-legal perspective, there are 3 things you need to understand.

(1) Understand why the domain name has been hard to get.

The topic must be very popular; you say the domain is for sale for $10K but nobody’s using it. Somebody’s taking a gamble that the term will be really hot!

Is that the .com? If it were me, I’d buy the .org, .info, .net and maybe .co and/or .biz. Suppose the name you want is “beautifulshoes.” Try beautiful-shoes.com, mybeautifulshoes.com and yourbeautifulshoes.com