Hi, I have spent considerable amounts of time and money to find a domain and finally got the domain arura.com through SnapName Snap-Back service, and I have spent lots of time and money to develop it to a community with active members with subdomains hosted for free at my domain. I have just paid someone to create a mascot for my website and consider to develop cms system for it. Arura is considered my online identity, since I register as Arura on the internet.

Today I received this email:

> Please change the name of your domain. We have a German brand registration
> for that name. This will lead to complications!

It is not a very formal email, so do I have to be concerned? And what should I reply back to keep my domain and not make an enemy.

Give me good advice please.

Also want to add that I have looked up in trademark search engines for Europe and US that Arura is not trademarked.

Best regards
Arura

Given the expense and time you have put into this, I would spend another $200 and talk to a lawyer about your potential liabilities with this domain.

Personally though, and do note that I am NOT an international trademark and intellectual property attorney - ;) - but I would assume given that your site being a small community and even if they have a trademark on it in Germany - I think it has to be confusingly similar to be something that you could risk losing the name for.

So, maybe your lawyer will tell you to register a trademark here. Maybe he will tell the other party to get lost, who knows.. :D

Good luck though-
-WC-

This has happened *many* times to me over the years and I always ignore it unless it comes from a lawyer.

If they start repeatedly emailing me, a polite email stating that they do not own the trademark on the said name in your country etc... usually does the trick.

This kind of thing goes on all the time. Basically, unless they own an international trademark there's not much they can do about it.

I don't know about international law, but I don't believe they would have a case unless their business can be mistaken as your business with the same name.

Yeah, that's my point exactly. Nothing that's confusingly similar about it.

Might want to talk to a lawyer though to protect you against future types of attack like this.

-WC-

arura :

Talk to John Berryhill ( a pupolar,dependable and experienced TradeMark attorney in this field )..he has a site also and participates in Dan's forums at dnforum.com.

He should be able to help you.

Cheers

<edit>
Ooops, just saw ur post over there at dnforum...
Good luck, anyways
</edit>

I appreciate your feedback very much. After receiving replies here and at dnforum.com, I feel more confident that they do not have a strong case if they wish to challenge me for the domain.

Best regards
Arura