Think Twice Before Registering NetBook Domain Names

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Popular technology gizmo is a trademarked term.

Savvy domainers jump on trends and register (or buy) popular new terms before they go mainstream. One term that has jumped into tech talk in earnest over the past year is “netbook”. Netbooks are essentially small and cheap laptops that travel well.

This category of laptops is all the rage, and major manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon advertising their latest netbooks.


Above: Google Trends for “netbook” searches.

There’s just one problem. It seems that the term netbook isn’t really new at all. A company called Psion has a trademark the term for computers (it previously offered a product called Netbook). As it should, Psion is trying to protect the trademark and is calling on people to stop using the term. If the term is no longer associated with Psion’s trademark then it will be diluted. It’s sort of like how Google’s lawyers don’t want people to use the term Google as a verb. If people say “I googled it” and just mean “I searched it”, it loses its protection. (See also Scotch Tape).

Now Google is weighing in on the term. Psion asked Google to not allow companies to use the term netbook in their Adwords ads. After investigating, Google decided to comply.

There have been a handful of domain sales including the word netbook, including netbooks.de ($3,222), netbooksinc.com ($5,556), and, just this month, ThinkNetbook.com $75.

I suspect Intel will buy rights to the trademark and let the industry use the term, but that hasn’t happened yet. My advice would be to tread carefully when registering any domain names with “netbook” in them, even if you don’t mean to violate the trademark.

Further Reading:

  1. Netbook.co.uk Domain Name Goes up for Auction
  2. Psion Wants Intel’s Netbook.com Under Cybersquatting Statute
  3. Registering Google’s Domains

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9 Comments » - Posted in Policy & Law by

Comments

  1. Tony
    February 8th, 2009 | 10:40 pm

    The generic term for netbook is subcompact notebook or laptop.

    What came first? Psion’s TM for “netbook” or Intel’s 1994 registration of netbook.com?

  2. D
    February 9th, 2009 | 3:14 am

    Tony:

    Netbook.com was purchased by Intel this past September. I could have purchased this name a few weeks earlier then them, but decided not to.

  3. Tony
    February 9th, 2009 | 6:38 am

    Wow, I gave Intel the benefit of the doubt when I checked the whois. Thanks for passing that on.

  4. Domainer
    February 9th, 2009 | 9:40 am

    Tony quote -

    “I could have purchased this name a few weeks earlier then them, but decided not to.”

    I could have purchased Netbook.com from Jim Painter but decided not to.
    I couldn’t afford it. :)

  5. D
    February 9th, 2009 | 1:19 pm

    Hardly. He wanted 25k for it.

  6. Domain Name Wire » News » Psion Wants Intel’s Netbook.com Under Cybersquatting Statute - The Domain Industry's News Source
    March 1st, 2009 | 9:44 pm

    [...] month I warned about registering domain names with “netbook” in them. Although the term is generally thought [...]

  7. M
    June 1st, 2009 | 5:36 pm

    http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/06/psion-cries-uncle-in-netbook-trademark-beef.ars

  8. tw
    March 1st, 2010 | 3:45 pm

    Same issue w/ SmartBooks?

    http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,62061170,00.htm

  9. Sri
    August 28th, 2010 | 7:03 am

    What about the hyphenated version? Would Net-Book.com have generic interpretation?

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