Tinychat.com wants my tiny.chat domain for free

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11570516

by chintan39 • 10 years ago

20 7 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

First things first tinychat.com is an online video community. tiny.chat is a small chat application with text only chat.

I wanted to start a tiny/small chat application, that used less bandwidth and less data.I have already developed most parts.

But received an email from a lawyer that tiny.chat is a trademark infringement. (Just before a month from expiry of domain on May 20, 2016)

Is it allowed that for tinychat.com to get the domain ownership from me?

The domain is worth $15000 http://www.estibot.com/appraise.php?a=appraisal&k=8a87bdda37259b454bda4477ac78f31f&domain=tiny.chat

legostormtroopr• 10 years ago

A. When did "tinychat.com" launch?

B. When did "tiny.chat" launch?

If B < A: tell them to go jump

Else: contact a lawyer

pyvpx• 10 years ago

free, online domain appraisals are worthless.

bnb• 10 years ago

You'd probably have to look into whether TLDs count toward copyright, e.g. if company ABCXYZ (TM) could claim against abc.xyz.

The reallllly important thing is that you're not calling your chat app TinyChat, but Tiny. If you are calling it TinyChat and started after they opened, you'love need to reassess. If you're calling it Tiny, then you're better off.

Not a lawyer, just what I've experienced the laws around this to be.

chintan39• 10 years ago

Great Idea!!!! I can call my Tiny, It sounds better too.

I just hope there is no TM violation for Tiny. ;)

mchannon• 10 years ago

Their trademark predates the .chat TLD (I looked it up on TESS).

Nevertheless, your use is arguably different (this distinction matters under trademark law). You're no doubt going to call the business (if it even is a business) something other than TINYCHAT, and are going to have a substantially different trademark.

This is tricky (and IANAL), but I'd simply not respond if you are actually in good faith preparing a different product with a different market. Simply owning a domain doesn't make you a trademark infringer. There is no dot in their trademark (service mark) name. They could have included a dotted version in their trademark application, and they opted not to.

In addition, to avoid further headaches with those people, consider coming up with a different name for your product, and simply redirect your URL to that different name.

brudgers• 10 years ago

[IANAL]

Paying a lawyer to draft a letter was deemed cheaper than trying to purchase the domain. That's why they did that instead of offering to purchase it.

There's an asymmetry of expense involved if they "lawyer up" and you just stonewall. To them, that's the minimum value of the domain name. You can always "lawyer up" later to further increase their costs.

However, none of that matters. What matters is how much it is worth to you to keep the domain.

Good luck.

tmaly• 10 years ago

I think you are ok in this case, but see if you can get a free consultation with a lawyer that deals with trademarks.

If you had a domain like macbookprocase I would be a bit more worried.

Tinychat.com wants my tiny.chat domain for free

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