InternetBrands.com enforcing trademark on (fan) sites using vBulletin in domain name?

محروم.كوم · #1 06-18-2010, 03:30 PM

Hey staff (IB Adrian),

Before I send in a support ticket, I want to know who to contact and if everybody can expect an email now, or if vBulletin-Skins.com was just out of luck.

It's come to my attention that InternetBrands.com is sending legal notice(s) to site(s) with vBulletin in the domain name, to my knowledge: vBulletin-Skins.com (registered: 25-may-2010).

I've gotten many of my domain names with vBulletin in them prior to the pending trademark, or even registered, so they're grandfathered in. And quite a few potentially afterwards, but I was on the team, and never had any complaints from the team who was well aware of these domains. To paraphrase the business manager who I have a gentleman's agreement with: "As long as you are not commercially exploiting .. and there's no conflict of interest (i.e. offering same services while you're on the team, as Jelsoft offers).

Since I am no longer interested in the future of the vBulletin product, and we're focussing our "the official vBulletin fans web site" on solely vbfans.com, and with me no longer being part of the official team. I have been selling the domain names where possible, letting them expire, or simply having them point to vbfans.com.

I would like to discuss this internally with someone who has any say about this, without being thrown back and forth between vBulletin Solutions Inc. support team members and the people from HQ from IB.

Please let me know who to ATTN: the ticket to from IB (since this is a IB matter) or (pref.) their email address.

And this is also my way of sending a notice to you guys that all my domains have 'no email' set at namecheap, so if any mail is sent to me, it will simply bounce. And I tend to ignore legal notices anyway, I don't do well with threats (I haven't received any yet).

The following is a quick unsorted dump, all being used on a 'fan' basis, non-commercial.

domain | registered
vbulletin.nl 2003-03-02 (grantfathered in)
vbulletin.me Thu 07/17/2008 (heard warez group talk about domain, registered it to prevent that)
vbulletin-articles.com Wed 02/07/2007
vbulletin-blogs.com Fri 08/24/2007
vbulletin-chat.com Fri 02/10/2006
vbulletin-chats.com Sat 02/11/2006
vbulletin-css.com Mon 07/18/2005 (grantfathered in)
vbulletin-fans.com Sat 07/17/2004 (not giving this one up, ever) (grantfathered in)
vbulletin-language.com Sat 09/11/2004 (grantfathered in)
vbulletin-languages.com Wed 10/26/2005 (grantfathered in)
vbulletin-style.com Thu 07/17/2008
vbulletin-styles.com Tue 05/03/2005 (grantfathered in)
vbulletin-tutorial.com Wed 10/26/2005 (grantfathered in)
vbulletin-tutorials.com Tue 09/14/2004 (grantfathered in)

Hope to hear from IB Adrian soon. So we can address this internally, avoiding any nonsense in the future.

[edit: had some questions from customers]
To my knowledge, and understanding, and therefor grandfathered in, are domains marked above, because:
The USPTO has given the VBULLETIN trademark serial number of 78771803. The current federal status of this trademark filing is REGISTERED. On Tuesday, December 13, 2005, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for VBULLETIN. This trademark is owned by Jelsoft Enterprises Limited __DEFINE_LIKE_SHARE__