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Greetings:

Please consider that I'm not a lawyer, but based on my understanding of all the cases to date, you are cybersquatting.

And if Vanguard wanted to press civil charges, it would be in their right; and, they may have the right to press criminal charges.

It might be different if the names were not so clearly owned by Vanguard; but you could not have picked a worse domain name to own legally and ethically without running into problems.

Just my 2c. but why quarrel with poor Vanguard? Go ahead and let 'em have the name. For about $25K.

> fcsnc: Just my 2c. but why quarrel with poor Vanguard? Go ahead and let 'em have the name. For about $25K.

LOL ... You probably don't need to pay them $25K for compensation. If you ever dare ask them for anything more than $35 (the corporate rate of registering a domain name, with Verisign of course), be prepared to render at least some $5K to retain a lawyer and perhaps another $5K to compensate their loss nominally (if and only if you are able to strike a deal with them later in good terms).

Always amazed when someone comes to a web forum to request legal advice......

Easy way is to let them have it cheaply. If you have any desire to do otherwise, engage a lawyer immediately.

By your own statement, you are attempting to trade off of their name....danger ahead.

You might want to do some reading at http://www.udrplaw.net.

-t

It's best you give the domain up, it's a big and famous trade mark and with well regarded funds. The only reason you got it was that they were to lazy to request it when the registeration period for .US was limited to trademark holders. A few other .US have already reverted to trademark holders.

Put up some porn and threaten to sue :D

Your comment is not helpful. :rolleyes:

Peter

Thank God it's Friday, kick back with some beer and watch the Playboy channel :D

If I had a site with the first paragraph going the extra mile to make sure there is no confusion between my site and the official Vanguard homepage (like FidelityMonitor.com does with it's coverage of Fidelity) do you think I'm in the clear?
VanguardMutualFunds.us would almost certainly be found to be infringing on a trademark and to be likely to be mistaken for a site belonging to them. That point is why it differs from FidelityMonitor.com; that name carries less of an implication that it's a Fidelity-run site.

In general the type of content the site has -- or even if a site is operational -- doesn't carry weight in a domain name dispute. The only points at issue are whether the name is the same as or confusingly similar to a trademarked term or name to which another party has rights, whether you have a legitimate right or interest to the term in the name (and those two points will give you trouble) and whether you registered the name in "bad faith."

There is "fair use" precedent that would likely protect a name like "FidelityMonitor.com" (the same principle that allows registrations of "*****sucks.com" style domains) but the only way you'd have the same protection would be if you used a similar word in your domain name to indicate that it's not a Vanguard-run site. VanguardMutualFundWatch, for example.

JayC's pretty accurate on this. The measure of infringement is whether or not your use of the name causes "dillution" of their trademark. Clearly anybody seeing the name "VanguardMutualFunds.us" would reasonably assume that this is a site owned and operated by Vanguard. The law says that if Vanguard owns the trademark to their name and has invested so much in branding their identity and making it well-known and easily recognized, then you do not have the right to utilize the popularity of their indentity in any way for any purpose. The name you've chosen clearly meets the criteria for dillution and it's simply not worth battling with them on something like this.

There have been many big cases that were far less cut-and-dry where you'd be rather surprised by the outcome. Intent does not matter.

There was quite an interesting case where Don Henley was suing another guy who happened to share the same name, "Don Henley" for using, I believe Don-Henley.com or .net - I don't recall the specific domain, but it was rather interesting because the one Don Henley wasn't trying to capitalize off of the other's name at all and had all sorts of notices on his site clarifying his identity.

I'm not sure of the outcome on that case, but in the end it's not your intent that matters with the issue of trademark dillution.

Hope that's helpful.

Mike

I'm not a lawyer.. Duh.. :)

With that said, I can't imagine any thing you could put on the website for this domain that would show to a judge that you weren't intending on confusing potential surfers.

Well, suppose you could put a parody site up. Or maybe even a Fan site (I love these mutual funds so much, here's why!'.

Or you could change your name legally to Mr. Vanguard M Funds. lol. :D

Realistically, any lawyer interaction is going to cost you atleast a few hundred dollars - just to get any lawyer up to speed. That's assuming no action on their part. Is it really worth even $250 (super-minimal lawyer fees) to you to keep this domain?

My vote would be to offer them for the expenses you have spent to obtained them. Then you are out nothing but the time to register them.

What do you think?
-WC-