Dear Rich: Nolo’s Patent, Copyright & Trademark Blog

In your case, you registered in two classes and one of them included "On-line journals, namely, blogs featuring self-help, personal growth, and gratitude." So, you'll have a good basis to stop a blog that offers information or commentary under a confusingly similar name. That is, if you went to court, you would have a good chance of prevailing.

However, you will have difficulty asserting your rights against the blogger under international cybersquatting rules, even if the blogger acted in bad faith, since all Blogspot.com blogs are subdomains. In other words, bloggers at Blogspot.com don't "own" domains; they've acquired limited rights to post under Blogger's (that's the company that runs the service) terms of service. However, if the blog's name is misleading or confusing people as to its source, you may be able to appeal to Blogger (owned by Google, Inc., btw) based on a violation of its blog content rules. Write to them and explain the situation; they may be able to help you out.

The Dear Rich staff admires your diligence in acquiring all these forms of protection, but the staff is confused about your statement that you have acquired copyright protection in the name, since copyright does not extend to names

Dear Rich: I have a question. I own a domain name -- let's just call it gamingaus.com. I found out that someone has registered the trademark gamingaustralia.com. Would I be infringing their trademark? I'm so glad you asked. The short answer is "probably" (based on the assumption you are both offering gambling services and the fact that the names are fairly similar.)

The billable answer is that many variables arise when choosing a domain name similar to an existing trademark. For example, you may be able to use your domain name if you can show that consumers aren't likely to be confused by the two names, or that you are the first (or "senior") user, or that you are not offering the same services. Say, for example, the other company offers gambling services and you offer "gaming" services (in which you assist in the removal of some species of Australian vegetation). Or, perhaps your site helps people with "gaming" the Medicaid system. If those arguments fail, there's always the possibility that you could challenge the trademark registration on the basis that it is "merely descriptive" (or the generic term) for what the service offers.

The fact is that even unrelated services -- say, wildlife preservation vs. pro wrestling -- can trigger problems. You'll also get hassled if you acquired the domain name primarily to profit by selling it to the other company. The Dear Rich staff would recommend you err on the side of caution, since gambling enterprises are usually well-funded and unafraid to litigate -- or, as our staffers put it: "the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill."

Got a question for Dear Rich? Send it to dearrichquestion@gmail dot com, and make sure it has the header: "Question."