I recently had the misfortune of receiving a cease and desist order on one of my domain names. Apparently because a company trademarked their name 30 years ago, it gives them the right to trademark any use of the phrase that makes up their name. Even though that phrase is used everyday by people that are not directly addressing their company, they have the right to make you give up the domain name without any compensation. For example, Dave Smith’s company might be called “Car Wash” (because damn it, he’s not very creative). So a few years later John Doe goes out and registers www.chicagocarwash.com for his business. Now since Dave registered his business “Car Wash” back in 1904 before there was this new fangled thing called the internet, no one in the world can now register a domain name with the phrase “car wash” in it because Dave trademarked it. Even though every mom and pop company across the U.S. uses “car wash” on their signs for you guessed it, a “Car Wash”, John Doe can’t register “chicagocarwash.com” because it might damage the value associated with Dave’s national franchised  “Car Wash” stores. John is therefore left with trying to find a less general name like “buggy wash” that no normal human would ever think of using to find his car wash. Dave’s lawyer also tells John that he can’t even use “Car Wash” in his META tags because it may still cause confusion with his brand. Meanwhile Dave is marketing his far inferior service under his “trademarked before anyone was born” “Car Wash” website thus creating an anti-competitive market for his over-priced service. Is this what we’ve come to America? Apparently so. So rather than John Doe being forced to relinquish his domain to Dave without compensation. John Doe told Dave to go get his own damn domain name and just deleted the record for his account at XYZ Registrar.

I find it disturbing that just because a company has a lawyer on staff and their business name is a common phrase, they are allowed to crush another company from ever competing with them until someone comes up with a better phrase to describe their industry. Funny thing is, that John could go register “hoverwash.com” because has has a hunch that all of human civilization will be using hovercraft to travel from place to place in a few years, but Dave will then have his lawyer retroactively file a patent on the word “wash” so that no one can register any domain name with the word wash in it. Oh and by the way, you won’t be able to write a blog post with the word “wash” either so I’ll be getting a bill in a few years for each instance of that word in this post (16 times at $1000 each). Where will it end?