Someone else's trademark in your domain: how to avoid losing it

She found the name on a Tuesday. Short, clean, easy to say out loud. The .com was free — twelve dollars a year. She registered it, launched the product, put the name on the landing page, the invoices, the social accounts.

Fourteen months later, an email from a law firm. Their client has a registered trademark on that word. They want the domain. Not an offer — a demand.

Here's the part nobody tells you at checkout: registering a domain and owning a name are two different things. You paid for the address. The word itself may already belong to someone else.

The plain answer: if someone holds a trademark on your domain's name — in your market — they can take the domain from you through a process called UDRP, and in the US they can sue for money on top of that. This applies to brand-new domains and expired ones alike, and expired ones carry an extra trap. This page is a map, not legal advice. When it gets real, talk to a lawyer.

If I register a domain name, is it mine?

Yes, the way an apartment is yours. Pay the rent, keep the address. Nobody else can use it while you hold it.

But the word — the name itself — is a separate question. People ask "can you copyright your domain name?" No. Copyright covers works: text, code, images. Names are covered by trademark — a name used to sell things. Trademark rights come from use in commerce, and registering a domain doesn't create them.

The reverse does work, by the way. Once you actually sell under the name, you can apply to register it as a trademark yourself. The domain is the address. The selling makes the brand.

What a trademark covers, in plain words

A trademark protects a name in a market. One word can be shared by an airline and a plumbing brand, because nobody confuses a flight with a faucet. That's why a small company can hold a word a giant doesn't use.

But the protection bends two ways:

Same word, same kind of product — the trademark wins. A fitness app using a name already registered for fitness software is asking for trouble.
Famous brands get wide protection. If a name evokes a giant company in any market, walk away. And no, a different extension doesn't help: thebrand.io still contains the brand.

UDRP: how they take the domain

You hold the lease on the shop. They claim rights over the sign above the door.

UDRP — the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy — is the process that decides who's right. It applies to .com, .io, .org, .ai and most other common extensions, because it's part of the deal you accepted at registration. The trademark owner files a complaint with an approved provider such as WIPO. They have to prove three things:

The domain is identical or confusingly similar to their trademark.
You have no rights or legitimate interest in the name.
You registered and used it in bad faith.

Bad faith under UDRP, in plain words: you grabbed the name to sell it back to them, to block them, to disrupt a competitor, or to catch their traffic. Offering the domain to the trademark owner "at the right price" is the classic self-inflicted wound — that email gets quoted in the complaint.

If they win, the domain transfers to them. No money damages, just the domain — but for a product that lives at that address, that's everything. The whole thing moves faster and costs them far less than a lawsuit.

And "small" doesn't protect you. The complainant doesn't have to be a giant — a modest company with a registered mark and a clear story can win against a solo founder who "just liked the name".

The US law on top: money, not just the domain

UDRP takes the domain. In the United States, a trademark owner can also go to court under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act — the law aimed at people who register trademarked names to profit from them. If they win, the court can award statutory damages: money set by the law, from $1,000 up to $100,000 per domain, without the owner having to prove what the harm was worth ^[1].

Most people settle long before that. But it's the reason a cease-and-desist letter deserves a lawyer's eyes and not a delete key. Other countries have their own versions of this law; the specifics differ, the direction is the same.

Can I buy a domain name that is trademarked?

Sometimes, and the risk sits entirely with you. The honest breakdown:

Registered mark, your market — no. This is the contested domain name scenario, and you will likely lose it, along with the work you built on it.
Registered mark, a clearly different market — maybe. Shared words exist. But "maybe" is not something you want to bet a year of evenings on.
Famous mark — no, in any market.
Dictionary word with no mark anywhere near your product — usually fine. The trademark has to exist before your use, in a relevant market, for this to become a fight.

The check that matters takes twenty minutes and costs nothing. Do it before you register, not after you've printed the logo.

The expired domain trap

A good expired domain is a corner that signposts have pointed to for years — links from newspapers, universities, Wikipedia. People already walk there. That's what makes expired domains valuable.

But some corners were somebody's shop, and the shop still owns the rights to the sign.

Companies forget to renew. Their domain drops, lands on an auction list, and you buy it. Their trademark didn't drop with it. And if that domain was the trademark owner's own site, "I didn't know" is a hard sell — the history is public, and pointing their old traffic at your product looks exactly like the bad faith UDRP was written for. The flip side is worse: buying an expired domain because it was a brand's site, to catch their visitors, isn't a shortcut. It's the thing itself.

Before you buy any expired domain, look at what it was:

What was on it? The Wayback Machine shows the old site, free.
Who links to it? Editorial sites, directories or a spam past — that's the domain's real history. We keep historical records of expired domains going back to 2006.
Is the word trademarked? Same check as a new domain. Drop years don't clean a trademark.

Two quick side notes

Affiliate sites. Registering somebrand-review.com to rank for that brand's name is one of the most common ways people lose domains. Ranking for their name is also exactly how they find you.

Selling. Registered a name in good faith and now someone wants to buy it? Get advice before you name a price. Registered it hoping to sell to the brand? Re-read the bad faith list, then let it drop.

How to check a name before you register it

Search USPTO (the US trademark office) for the exact name and near-miss spellings. Look at what the marks cover, not just whether they exist.
Search EUIPO the same way for the European Union.
Run a plain web search. Is anyone selling anything under this name anywhere? A trademark can exist without being registered.
For an expired domain, add the Wayback Machine and a look at its link history.

Twenty minutes. Cheaper than a rewrite of your entire brand.

When to talk to a lawyer

Not for every domain. But do it when: a letter or UDRP complaint arrives, you're about to spend real money on branding a name that's close to an existing mark, someone makes you a large offer for your domain, or you're about to bid serious money at auction. Anything you write to the other side can end up quoted in the complaint — that alone is worth the consultation.

What to do now

Pick your candidate name, then search it in USPTO and EUIPO plus a plain web search — before registering, not after.
If it's an expired domain, check what it was: the Wayback Machine for the old site, and the link history for its past. The DD Backlink Strainer Chrome extension checks the domains you see on ExpiredDomains and auction sites in a side panel — the free plan covers 250 domain checks a day.
Found nothing? Register it, and put your energy into one strong domain with many products rather than collecting names. Fewer domains, fewer ways to lose them.
If a letter arrives, talk to a trademark lawyer before you reply.
Choosing between .com, .io and .ai is a real decision — but it's about trust and availability, never a way around a trademark. If you're still at the drawing board, start with how to choose a domain name — an afternoon, not a month.

Sources

15 U.S.C. § 1117(d) — statutory damages under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.