Domain Empire

question Can a German trademark owner claim a .com or limited only to .de?

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Leo2k

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I see a name trademarked by a company through Wipo.

IPR: National Trademark Registration
Designation country: Germany

Name not found in USPTO
& It's not an international trademark as I see in Wipo

Can the above Germany trademark holder claim my .com or German trademarks are limited only to .de?

More info about the domain

Domain registered by owner : 2017
Trademark registered: 2019
I bought it from the owner later after the trademark.

Is it safe for me to contact that company or can they dispute it?
 
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No idea on the legal side but from a strategy side if there are trademarks involved I would never reach out to them as no matter what the law says the optics don't look good, especially as you acquired the name after their trademark.
 
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You are approaching this incorrectly.

Whether a trademark owner will be successful in a UDRP depends more on the intent of the domain name registrant than "what kind of trademark does the complainant have."

The UDRP requires the complainant to show three things:

1. The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trade or service mark in which the complainant has rights.

2. The domain registrant has no legitimate rights or interests in the domain name.

3. The domain registrant has registered and used the domain name in bad faith relative to the trademark.

For whatever reason, there is a lot of concern about #1, so let's be clear. Nobody cares whether the trademark is a German registered mark, a US registered mark, or even an unregistered common law mark. If they can claim some kind of trademark rights somewhere, that will be just fine.

But that only is one of three things they have to prove.

Things like "Why would you expect a domain registrant in Korea to know about a German trademark?" or "Lots of other people have trademarks for that term" etc. and so on, may factor into the analysis on points 2 and 3.

If the only facts on the table are:

- Complainant has a German registered mark for "EXAMPLE".

- Domain registrant acquired the domain name and then tried to sell it to the Complainant.

And NO OTHER FACTS - then what do you THINK the conclusion is going to be?

On those two facts - being the only two facts on the table - it's pretty easy to conclude that the domain registrant acquired the domain name for the purpose of selling it to the trademark owner, because that's what the domain registrant immediately did.

But real life tends to be a lot more complicated than a two-fact hypothetical.

The bottom line, though, is it does not matter where the complainant has trademark rights or what sort of trademark rights they have - any kind of trademark right will get them 1/3 of the way toward the goal. The rest of the analysis is entirely dependent on the behavior of the domain registrant.
 
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Thank you very much @jberryhill
Got a very good understanding about the trademark now
 
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