I'm creating a shopping cart feature on a website and planning on calling it "Hotlist" rather than shopping cart. However, I did a trademark search and found that "Hot List" is trademarked.

If I used this to name one of the features on my site, do you think this would be violating trademark laws?

Well I think your first step is to find out what Hot List is trademarked for. Trademarks are funning. Their is the WWF (World Wide Wrestling) which is trademarked and then their is the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation). Both are trademarked as WWF. The reason they can do this is because they do completely different things.

IANAL, but...

My gut feeling is you wouldn't have a problem, because (1) "hot list" is sort of generic and (2) the trademarks for "Hot List" don't describe exactly what you are planning to do, though there is at least one ® in the online field.

Amazon.com has trademarked "Amazon.com Hotlists" which contains the exlicit disclaimer "NO CLAIM IS MADE TO THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO USE "HOTLISTS" APART FROM THE MARK AS SHOWN"

You might want to distinguish your "HotList" by calling it something unique like "HostListNow" or "HotListBuy" or "Your HostList" or something.

IMO, the real question in something like is often what you would do if someone who has a trademark in this decided to pick on you, would you wantthe expense and aggravation of defending it?

Again, NOT A LAWYER but my fee is good, right? :D