From the Nolo Business & Human Resources Center
Choosing and Registering a Domain Name
How to pick, register, and protect your website's
unique address.
To do business on the Web, you'll need at least one domain name -- the .com
or .net identifier that has become so familiar (and sometimes annoying) in
commercials and print advertising. You may want to take the name you use for
your business as your domain name, with .com or .net tacked on at the end -- or
you might pick a new domain name that you think will draw people to your
website.
To help your website, and business, flourish, pick a domain name that:
- is easy for Web users to remember and find
- suggests the nature of your product or service
- serves as a strong trademark so competitors won't be able to use a business
name or domain name similar to it, and
- is free of legal conflicts with trademarks belonging to other businesses.
Choosing a Domain Name
The best domain names are often the simple ones -- short, memorable, clever,
and easy to spell and pronounce. Nevertheless, you must weigh the sometimes
competing concerns of a Web-friendly name with the importance of obtaining
trademark protection for the name you choose.
Can You Get Trademark Protection?
Straightforward domain names that describe a business's product or service
are more difficult to protect as trademarks than
distinctive and clever domain names. Many good domain names -- for instance,
coffee.com, drugs.com, and business.com -- are not eligible for much trademark
protection because they aren't unique; they identify whole categories of
products or services. Likewise, domain names that use geographic identifiers or
surnames are less likely to receive trademark protection -- unless your name
happens to be Dr. Koop or something equally famous.
Balance Competing Concerns to Find the Best Name
Despite limited trademark protection, ordinary domain names are potentially
powerful because of the way people find information on the Internet. For this
reason, you should consider carefully whether it will benefit you more to choose
a domain name that's easy to find and difficult to protect under trademark law
or one that's distinctive and easily protectible as a trademark.
The downside to using a distinctive name created by coining a new word or
using an arbitrary term (as in yahoo.com, flooz.com, or amazon.com) is that
these names require extensive marketing efforts to attract customers, since the
domain names have nothing to do with their underlying products or services.
One good balancing strategy is to choose a domain name that evokes a
website's product or service but isn't too ordinary, such as medscape.com,
askjeeves.com, or inc.com. Domain names like these are eligible for trademark
protection, and customers should be able to easily remember and associate these
names with your business.
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