my company name is also the name of a nearby City and also the County i live in...i choose a generic name
various competitors keep trying to use names similar to mine....the last one was my same website name but with .net at the end...when you clicked on it it actually said my company name across the top of his website....his actual company name was in small type at the bottom of his website. He was actually using my exact name.......i wrote about it on several business forums and he went away quickly before i looked into legal advice.....his website no longer exists....it seemed to change within a week of me writing about it and then a few months later was gone...i get Google alerts anytime someone types in my company name and i assume he saw i was writing about him and talking about legal action
now there's a guy who is using 20 different names for his company...basically every city and then the word plumbing....he's in the phone book 20x and has 20 websites....since my company name is one of the cities he wants he just added the name 'SERVICE'....at first i didnt care, but now he's actually ahead of me on one of the yahoo searches i did....he's 2nd-4th on all the other searches....its like he's taking my name and there's nothing i can do about it....if a customer refers me and tells someone to look me up on the internet they may get him.....if he gets a bad rep. it may rub off on me since the names are so close.......and its not his real company name....he's just calling himself 20 different names
it bugs the heck out of me that someone can take my company name and add a little something onto the end and its legal.....
i called my lawyer today to find out if there's anything i can do....he said it may even be legal for someone to take my name and change the word plumbing to plumber and it could be legal...he recommended trying to copyright my name and logo....which i will be doing tonight..its $15 on the state of WI website.....sounds like i may not be able to copy right it since its such a generic name...
just wanted to warn all of you to copyright your names....for $15 its worth it....you never know who will try to steal your name from you
also buy .net, .org versions of your domain name....
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