Restrictions on Selling Websites with Trademarked Domains

We’ve talked about trademarks on the Flippa blog before. While there is inherent risk of a DMCA takedown notice when buying a potentially trademarked domain, some buyers aren’t troubled by this possibility, and some domains that contain a trademark can be used under a fair use policy.

As always, we don’t attempt to police potential trademark breaches on behalf of trademark holders but actively work with them when they bring breaches to our attention.

As a result of recently working with a number of these trademark owners, we have developed measures that will now block some specific trademarked URLs from being sold on Flippa.

This list currently includes some frequently-used trademarked names such as Twitter, Google and Facebook and will grow over time upon request by trademark holders.

If a site listed on Flippa infringes on a trademark you own, you can report the listing through our DMCA Procedure (pdf).

Does this guarantee that there won’t ever be trademarked domains on Flippa?
Not quite. While we’re now blocking certain trademarks from being listed at all, this only applies to a defined list of trademarks. It’s still up to trademark owners to defend their intellectual property by reporting infringement. If you’re purchasing a website or domain name listing on Flippa, then we encourage you to run a trademark search via the United States Patent and Trademark office, or at Trademarkia. particularly for .com, .net, .org and .info domains.

Apologies in advance to the owner of FacebookTwitterGoogle.com …

Image: west.m