Offers Googlegeeks.co.uk - offers?

[Brian Bentley]

I've been doing this SEO stuff for 20 years and I am so very tired

I will listen to serious offers for googlegeeks.co.uk - you know the score on how to check it's age, history etc..

pm me

 

[Brian Bentley]

Sorry, I seem to know more than you - https://www.google.com/permissions/trademark/rules.html

 

[RobM]

Somebody asked google once if they could use the google word in a domain related to this field. Apparently this was google's response:

'Thank you for contacting us with your inquiry before registering the domain names in question. Unfortunately, we cannot approve the registration of domain names that include Google's trademarks or confusingly similar approximations, even by Google Partners. We would accordingly request that you not move forward with registering the domains in question.'

Make of that what you will. Anyway a quick search in google (ironic) about whether you are allowed to use the word 'google' in a domain returns the answer.

*Edit* I visited the link you posted above and saw this/

• Don't remove, distort or alter any element of a Google Brand Feature. That includes modifying a Google trademark, for example, through hyphenation, combination or abbreviation, such as: Googliscious, Googlyoogly, GaGooglemania. Do not shorten, abbreviate, or create acronyms out of Google trademarks.

Is this not what you've done with this domain or am I misunderstanding?

 

[Brian Bentley]

Oh yes - you are both very wrong.

I could reel off sites like appleinsider, anything with VW in it, xbox, ps2 etc...

If you are selling a service which references another i.e. Google then it's fine. I have had this site nearly 10 years and they are not bothered

 

[RobM]

Law360, New York (May 16, 2017, 3:23 PM EDT) -- The Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday that “Google” has not become a generic trademark like "aspirin" or "thermos," rejecting a case claiming the tech giant had lost control of the name because of widespread use of “google” as a verb.

Siding with Google Inc., the appeals court shot down the argument that “google” had succumbed to so-called genericide, losing its status as a protected trademark by becoming “a generic term universally used to describe the act of internet searching.”

So you have a domain infringing on a trademark. It doesn't matter how you dress it up and whether or not you have got into trouble in the past. Anyway as you said - keep it another 10 years and trade off of it. Good luck.

 

[Brian Bentley]

damn and one of my friends has owned trustford.co.uk for eons - we'd better hand that over. etc.. etc.. The law states that, if you need to reference a trademark in order to 'go about your business' i.e. apple phone repairs, beatles t-shirts and so on then you can - and that includes domain name registration

 

[Adam H]

I used a trademark in a domain in my very naive and younger self, one of the first domains I registered I think and ran it for about 5 years way back when, grew it to around 15k UV a day, 3-5million PV a month, had causal discussions with the entity's director and marketing directors it was infringing, I even offered them to buy the site at one point.

Not at any point did they pursue me other than to request I changed our logo to not resemble the official logo in any shape or form.............but that didnt mean I was in the right and it doesn't mean they couldn't have taken it from me in an instant given their size.

I did end up changing the domain and redirecting the old one while I still had the chance to retain authority and traffic....once I had learned the how risky it was and how stupid I was, I consider myself lucky. I'm pretty sure if it had been the director previous to the current one in charge, I would have been on the chopping block and the site would be no more.

You can get away with it, but it doesn't mean you are above the trademark. Not knowing, or being too naive isn't an excuse.

 

[Brian Bentley]

Thanks everyone - I have let the domain expire