Company that filed .secure trademark application is now apparently using it in commerce.
People will try to game the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office all day long.
In August I wrote about how Asif LLC applied for the .secure trademark. It later applied for .bank.
Now Asif alleges actual use of the term in commerce.
How did the company allege it’s using the top level domain .secure in commerce?
Well, first of all it isn’t claiming it’s a TLD. It says it wants the trademark for domain registration services. This is a common tactic when trying to trademark a TLD since the USPTO won’t grant trademarks for TLDs.
Fine, but how to prove you’re using .secure for domain registration services? Sign up for a Go Daddy reseller account and create your own domain registration services. Take a look at this specimen submitted by Asif:
That address in the top level corner is for securepayment.net, GoDaddy’s URL for its reseller sites.
If you go to dot-secure.us it forwards to the reseller site.
Dotfamily got their trademark using the same approach over 2 years ago. Here’s their specimen:
http://tdr.uspto.gov/jsp/DocumentViewPage.jsp?77523986/SPE20080719074942/Specimen/1/16-Jul-2008/sn/false#p=1
the dotfamily.org url doesn’t resolve anymore.
.secure should at least have pointed the reseller account to the dot-secure.us url instead of the other way around.