Here's a good one.

I have a site called Big Woody's USA Trading Post. The url is bigwoody.us.

I recently received a letter from an Australian law firm telling me that their client tradingpost.com.au has sole claim to the name Trading Post and that I have 28 days to change the name of my site.

It's my contention that:

1. The Australian site does business basically within that continent.

2. My site deals exclusively with merchants within the USA.

3. While their site may be called "Trading Post," they have no right to the exclusive use of the word within a site's title. In my opinion, it would be tantamount to a website named Supermarket.com telling the local grocer that he can't call his place of business a supermarket anymore. Or Bookstores.com telling webmasters that no one can use the word "bookstore" in their site's titles anymore.

4. A quick Google search yields a nice crop of sites with Trading Post in the title.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

gestroud

This is a similar thing to Intel's trick of picking on companies with any combination of Intel in their name... I know some of these have been laughed out of court, so perhaps some of these cases may be useful?

A 'trading post' is a generic term to describe a place of business activity to do with trading. It does not refer to one specific place owned or trademarked by any one group or individual. Because it has already been established in common usage as a generic term as described, I can not see how anyone can legally restrict its usage as a descriptive term.

I agree with your analogy of the 'Supermarket' but ultimately, you should take legal advice on this one.

I think most legal firms would agree that 'trading post' is a generic term as used in the context of your site name.

It is however worth doing some research before you adopt a phrase that you might consider anyone could use. I have seen companies take action to defend exclusive use of straplines like "xxxxx to go!".

i used to manage a pub called the trading post. i'm pretty sure that that pub used the name trading post before the australian website existed, being as that was back in 1993/4 when i managed it, and it was around for years before then and is still around today.. so maybe i should send a letter to their lawyers telling them they are in breech themselves.. they're just being petty and should be told so..

i'd call them on it, your url is nothing similar to tradingpost.com.au, so therefore there is no direct link there where users can get confused and visit the wrong site.