Medical and slang terms as trademarks?

[Rickanator]

This is a weird question, but can somebody trademark a medical term or a medical slang term as a trademark?

We run a number of dating sites targeted to exclusive niche market segments.

One of these sites is an HIV dating site, for people who are living with HIV to meet others. I'm curious if the term HIV can be trademarked?

There are slang variants on the term HIV, such as POZ (for HIV positive). We registered a name that included POZ (PozSingles) - however we've received a notice from an attorney that some magazine related to HIV owns the term POZ. We did a little research, and the term POZ is trademarked by them. (however,doing google search on poz came back with over a million hits) Can they stop us from using POZ on our site?

If they can, we're considering changing the name of the site to IHIV.com. So, would anybody be able to stop us from using a medical term in our name?

I know these are weird sites, but they've actually been pretty successful in a niche market.

Thanks for any input..
Rick

 

[Dave_Z]

Ideally, any word (except common dictionary terms)
can be trademarked.

If they indeed have a trademark for it, I suggest you
consult an attorney specializing on these matters.
But worse comes to worse, you may have to ditch
the domain name & get a new one.

Sorry to see it happen to you.

 

[jberryhill]

Ideally, any word (except common dictionary terms) can be trademarked.

So, out of the following list, which ones would you consider trademarks, and which ones would you consider "common dictionary terms" -

1. shell

2. champion

3. united

4. joy

5. apple

 

[Dave_Z]

Originally posted by jberryhill
So, out of the following list, which ones would you consider trademarks, and which ones would you consider "common dictionary terms" -

1. shell

2. champion

3. united

4. joy

5. apple

I defer to you, dear sir. That's why I said "ideally".

In reality, anything goes. It's not meant as an
excuse, but you have a point there.

I stand corrected. :o

 

[Rickanator]

Originally posted by davezan

If they indeed have a trademark for it, I suggest you
consult an attorney specializing on these matters.

Thanks for the feedback. I can't really see how they can win though, since their trademark defines "Poz" as a magazine and an infomation source. We use the domain PozSingles as a dating site, and we do not provide information nor do we publish a magazine. I'm curious if they can stop anybody from using the term poz in any domain name.

I guess I'd compare this to using "Match" in a domain name, can Match.com stop anybody from using match in a domain name? I see a number of other dating sites, such as perfectmatch.com and others.. but Match.com came after us a few years ago for using saltlakematch.com (which we no longer own) and we had to stop using it a match / dating site. Why can perfect match continue operations, while other dating sites using "match" in their domain name get hassled?

Will check with an attorney though, thanks for the feedback. Trademarks are an interesting subject, and seem open to lots of subjective factors.

 

[domaindude]

Dear Rickanator,

Good Luck and let us know how things work out.

domaindude