can this misleads : 2 different sites with same title names hosted on wp.org & wp.com

[Welshy]

Somebody posted on the facebook page of my website (www.facebook.com/afroscandic) trying to promote her work and when I followed to check the link, I was surprised to see that the person's site is using almost same name with my website but only that the person's site is hosted on wordpress.com


my site is : http://www.afroscandic.com/
the other site is here : http://aafroscandic.wordpress.com/


Question:

1. What would you say about this?
2. Can this be misleading people to her site?

I just want to get some knowledge. Thanks.

[NicktheGeek]

IF you are going for the same keywords it could certainly cause overlap/confusion. If you are concerned that this might be trademark or copyright infringement then you need to contact a lawyer for details. I'm not a lawyer, not do a play one on TV so I can't speak to that.

[Welshy]

Thanks for your response. And this make it clear that anybody can get a similar site name via wordpress.com? For example, one could easily go and get http://studiopress.wordpress.com/

That is not good. I think that wordpress should have a way to stop such trend.

And I am actually confused on what to do - She sent me an e-mail that she would like to be featured on my site inorder to get her blog known. This is strange?

Any more tips from the community?

Thanks.

[JohnEniste]

There may be recourse if it is copyright infringement, but i really can't help you there, otherwise i don't think there is much you can do.
If i am doing something i want to protect, i will usually try to get my name on as many properties as possible, even if i don't actually use them. This would typically be at least:
domain.com
domain.co.uk
twitter
facebook
blogger
wordpress.com
pinterest
...and any others i can think of. I know this doesn't help your situation particularly, and depending on competition people will try misspellings etc

I don't think there is a lot you can do (unless of course you have resources like Apple and a maniacal wish to control everything)

[Welshy]

Thanks for your comment.

I am thinking if I need to tell the person to change the name so that it is not too close to mine if she will be willing.

Question:
Do you know if it will be much job to change the site name in wordpress? as I don't know how wordpress.com operates.

[LenKutchma]

Originally Posted by Welshy

Question:
Do you know if it will be much job to change the site name in wordpress? as I don't know how wordpress.com operates.

That's hard to say as I don't know much about how they operate either. But as others have said, unless your name/domain is a trademark or something, I'm not sure if anything can be done.

You mentioned that someone could go out and get studiopress.wordpress.com. They could also go out and get studiopress.net or studiopress.org etc.

The only way around it is to do what JohnEniste said and register your name with all of the popular services. Might also want to register your name using various TLDs as well, such as yoursite.org and yoursite.net and so forth.

Having said all of that, in your particular case, it wouldn't hurt to contact wordpress.com.

[tattvajit]

It is worth pondering over if you could trademark your site name now, if you haven't already, and then take retroactive action against someone who may have copied your site-name. Armed with a trademark you will likely have a stronger case to take to the wordpress.com folks. A lawyer can confirm, which I am not.

Irrespective of however this particular case turns out, going forward, along with the suggestion given by JohnEniste, you may want to consider displaying an intimidating legal notice in your site, if you don't have one already, to try and ward off any potential copycats.

[Welshy]

Thanks. I actually have a copyscape logo that warns those who might want to copy the content. But that is the content. That cannot stop anyone from using a similar site name.

Does the trade name cost much?

[AffordYourPassions]

I'm not a lawyer, nor a trademark expert, so I also would recommend you speak to a lawyer, but...

" there was nothing to prevent someone from using a trademarked name in a completely unrelated field or industry (for instance, Delta Faucet and Delta Airlines) because there was no possibility that consumers would confuse one for the other."

Trademarking your name would not stop someone in an unrelated field from using the name, especially as the other party already has the name in use before you trademark it.

From what I can tell from looking at the other blog, although the names are the same, she is not in the same business as you.

To file the paperwork yourself (in the US) costs approximately $500. If you get a lawyer to do it for you, the costs can jump to several thousand dollars. In either case, it is my understanding that the process takes a minimum of six months from start to finish.