Thread: Help!! Threat of lawsuit for Brand Infrigement

Hi,

Im a affiliate with playunited.com, and i own playunited.eu & .co.uk,
playunited have contacted me and wanting to buy my domain for very cheap
600$, else they are threatning with lawsuit.

They are threatning to sue me for brand infrigement. However, as far as im
concerned, i dont see any basis to their claim, does any know better?

Any suggestions?

/A.D

If playunited is registered as a brand in US, EU or in other jurisdiction you are unable to use that domain name.

Keep the $600 dude and take a course of ethics!!

Ask Larry the lawyer, he does both online gaming law and online copyright law.

http://www.firstamendment.com/

Did you pay for that domain, if so its' yours period. I am no Lawyer but have seen similiar cases. Call them on their bluff! greek39

I might suggest reading the saga of Nissan Computer Corporation:

http://www.nissan.com
http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php

If playunited.eu & co.uk are your sites, you're not at all letting people know that they are not on a Play United company page (in fact, you're effectively acting as if they ARE). . . That aspect could get you in some serious trouble, and probably give them a lot of leverage in court.

Good luck, hope you get justly compensated for your efforts.

It's simple economics... charge them exactly what it will cost them to go through with suing you. From their standpoint they will be saving time.

I'd guess to sell them for about $2000 to $3000, or at least that is what I would do.

Pay the "fair" price or "so sue me already"

Oh, but you SHOULD certainly be careful if you send them lots of players. They might kill your affiliate account. Like I said, pure economics.

dAn

When I studied branding and implied trademarks, the biggest point made was confusion.

If a visitor might come to your website, and mistakenly think they are @ Earn United, and Earn United has in the eyes of the law 'branded' the name or addy.. then you could be infringing.

For instance, if you owned a cookie shop, and I sold purses, we have the same URL (.com & .net) My customers are not likely to be easily confused, because cookies are not purses.

Thats just a basic overview though, and I'm by no means qualified to give advise.. just my understanding of the law

~LadyH

SEO's say a domain name should be branding now and not keyword based. That's why they're pissed.

Microsoft took windowscasino.com to court and lost.

why not work with each other, have play united create a landing page specifically for you with your tracker links. That way the control what the branding is, they can keep your content current and you get your rev share. Try it, it really works.

Brian