We have already written on our blog that buying a web domain does not mean that a trademark or service mark has also been protected. Nevertheless, we still often see clients mistakenly believe that by purchasing one or more web domains, they have also protected their brand. Some Slovenian domain providers are partly to blame for this, as they advertise that entrepreneurs protect their recognisable brand by purchasing a domain.
Trademark vs. web domain
A trademark or service mark and a web domain are two important things that must be distinguished, especially if you want to operate successfully online and protect the uniqueness of your brand in the long term. A trademark is a name, symbol or style used by a company or manufacturer for recognition and customer loyalty. A web domain is the address of a website that your customers can visit through a web browser.
A registered trademark gives its owner the highest level of legal certainty. There are certain exceptions for well-known marks, which may enjoy a degree of legal protection even if they are not registered. In practice, however, this should not be relied upon. The costs associated with trademark registration are small compared with the costs that may arise in proceedings to prove ownership of an unregistered mark.
On the other hand, caution is also required when buying a domain. It is certainly advisable to purchase as many domains as possible that relate to the name of your brand. This prevents a malicious competitor, or even a well-meaning but uninformed person, from buying a domain with the same brand name but a different extension, such as .com instead of .si, thereby creating confusion online and redirecting traffic intended for your website.
Practical example: the “Lemur Legal” trademark and web domains
At Lemur Legal, we registered the word mark “Lemur Legal” at the European level, and then purchased as many possible web domains around that mark as we could: lemur.legal, lemurlegal.com, lemurlegal.eu, lemurlegal.si, lemurlegal.it and lemurlegal.net. Despite owning all these domains, we actually use only one of them. For our adventure in the metaverse and even deeper into web 3.0, we also purchased the domain lemurlegal.eth, a domain for use on the Ethereum blockchain platform.