# Very similar Site Domain Names: Problems, solutions & tips how to avoid it.



## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

fdsales said:


> I just got an email about a new web/blog site appartently being run by Scott & Pat Fresener. It includes a link to a 7 page pdf document where Scott explains "his side of the story" regarding the closing of US Screen. Here's an excerpt from the last page of the document:
> 
> Don’t count the Fresener’s out. They were around long before many of the “new” players and they will
> be around long after they burn out.
> ...


 It was said that Scott is gone in an earlier post. He is not. First lets be clear I have not been posting here for several reason but I feel this is important and I need to make a statement. In an email today He told me he made a statement on this forum that he was coming out with a new site and it was well received.(maybe, yes and no) He wondered why I was not told of this. Scott is trying to re-establish himself with a new site and a new forum. However he made a mistake and choose to use a good part of my name as his new site. Thus he could cause confussion and in fact do finacial harm to me and my sites. We have been communicating with each other over the last day and he admits that there is a possability he made an error in the use of his name. With all his troubles I find it intersting he would do what he is doing. I guess when you been involved in this business for so many years it is hard to let go. Needless to say my lawyers may help him if we don't work out something. Best to all that have missed me here. needless to say you know hwere you can find me. Lou


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## veedub3 (Mar 29, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresener Has Resurfaced*

Lou,
When I got the email about Scott's new site and I clicked on the link the first thing I thought of was you. T-biz just stuck out in my head.
Bad business indeed.

Katrina


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## charles95405 (Feb 1, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

I don't have a dog in this fight...don't have a T-jet..don't plan on any dtg...don't know Scott...BUT I do know this..the new site name for Scott is tooooo close to Lou's so Scott should change...but given his track record...doubt he will do that. I think it take a lot of gall to be the owner of a company..that goes in the tank...for what ever reason..leaving a lot of folks in the lurch...and then come back, with a mea cupla saying all will be great. I for one would not do any business with such a company/owner until all the dust settles and the scammed people are made whole.


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## sunnydayz (Jun 22, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresener Has Resurfaced*



badalou said:


> It was said that Scott is gone in an earlier post. He is not. First lets be clear I have not been posting here for several reason but I feel this is important and I need to make a statement. In an email today He told me he made a statement on this forum that he was coming out with a new site and it was well received.(maybe, yes and no) He wondered why I was not told of this. Scott is trying to re-establish himself with a new site and a new forum. However he made a mistake and choose to use a good part of my name as his new site. Thus he could cause confussion and in fact do finacial harm to me and my sites. We have been communicating with each other over the last day and he admits that there is a possability he made an error in the use of his name. With all his troubles I find it intersting he would do what he is doing. I guess when you been involved in this business for so many years it is hard to let go. Needless to say my lawyers may help him if we don't work out something. Best to all that have missed me here. needless to say you know hwere you can find me. Lou



Ok so just out of curiosity I decided to lookup tbiz.com and t-biz.com on whois.net, since that is the word in common in both website domains. It seems that both of those are registered, and one of them has been around since 1996, which I would think was before either of these. So I am not so sure who is right, or if both are wrong. 

My point of this post, is for members deciding to start a website, make sure to do a good search of the primary words in your site name, to make sure no one has already registered them before. Doing this prevents future problems such as this and will save a ton of head aches in the future. Its really important to do the work to begin with so you have something that can last a lifetime


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## Masterkoin (Jul 23, 2008)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

I couldn't agree more about researching names to avoid this type of thing. There are plenty of similar names out there, but I think the reason this one seems like such a conflict is that not only are both of them tshirt related, but they are both tshirt/education themed.


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## Girlzndollz (Oct 3, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



sunnydayz said:


> My point of this post, is for members deciding to start a website, make sure to do a good search of the primary words in your site name, to make sure no one has already registered them before. Doing this prevents future problems such as this and will save a ton of head aches in the future. Its really important to do the work to begin with so you have something that can last a lifetime


Agreed, 100%.  I did not buy the other top level domains for my site, but have seen it recommended time and time again, so no one can come in as the .net version of me, and try to ''pretend'' to be me or steal my customers, confuse them, etc.

I've also seen it recommended to buy names that are confusingly similar to your own. It's only $10, after all. And it would go a long, long way to avoiding any headaches, or belly aching later on. 

Your post brought up a few question for me because of the fact that tbiz.com was registered to yet another person and alot longer ago. 

I started to thing about it, and realized, I don't think if I wanted to type tbiz101forum into my browser, I would accidentally type tbiznetwork. It's not "that" similar. 

I also looked, since I wondered how deep this ran, at the .nets, and realized if I was the owner of tbiz101 (dot.com) and tbiz101forum (dot.com) I'd be_ more_ concerned with the fact that the .net top level domains _are still available_ for these sites. 

If Scott had registered as a .net of tbiz101 or tbiz101forum, then that would go alot further to show the domain being registered in bad faith. 

If Scott's new site was called "tbizforum.com" (which *is *available) then it might show the new site was registered "in bad faith", which might be important in cases like these. That is for the lawyers and courts to hash out. 

Law isn't chemistry. You can't always put X + Y together and get XY. 

I suppose as Sunnydayz points out, _if_ Lou has a gripe/case against Scott, then the original domain owners of tbiz.com from 1996 have a legitimate gripe/case against_ both_ of these guys. 

Not legal advice, but a snippet from a site:



bitlaw.com website said:


> This policy has now been replaced with a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy created by ICANN and used by all accredited registrars. Under this new policy, a trademark owner can initiate a relatively inexpensive administrative procedure to challenge the existing domain name. In order to prevail, the trademark owner must show:
> that the trademark owner owns a trademark (either registered or unregistered) that is the same or confusingly similar to the registered second level domain name;
> that the party that registered the domain name has no legitimate right or interest in the domain name; and
> that the domain name was registered and used in bad faith.
> If the trademark owner successfully proves all three points in the administrative proceeding, then the domain name can either be cancelled or transferred to the prevailing trademark owner. If the trademark owner fails to prove one of these points, the administrative panel will not cancel nor transfer the domain name.


Immediately, if the above is accurate by law, which is for the lawyers and courts to hash out, then #2 and #3 could be a tough hurdle to jump for the tbiz101 camp:

#2 - Scott's been in the biz a long time and can show a legit right and interest in the name. Lou might have an educational site, but Scott has been in the business of educating people years longer.
#3 - Given the situation that Scott has been distracted with prior to and since the launch of Lou's forum, unless Scott is taking time out to watch a site/forum that doesn't actually relate too much to screen printing (only 7 threads on tbiz101forum) and DTG (only 4 threads on it) it's possible to surmiss Scott was not even "aware" of Lou's forum. 

There is other literature available, about similar name disputes, here is a link to the Bitlaw page the above came from. It is an interesting read, regardless of what an actual courtroom will do. I wonder if there are any cases on the net. 
Domain Name Disputes (BitLaw)


As usual, just one girlz_ "opinion"._ Best wishes to both parties involved for a mutually agreeable solution.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



Girlzndollz said:


> Agreed, 100%.  I did not buy the other top level domains for my site, but have seen it recommended time and time again, so no one can come in as the .net version of me, and try to ''pretend'' to be me or steal my customers, confuse them, etc.
> 
> I've also seen it recommended to buy names that are confusingly similar to your own. It's only $10, after all. And it would go a long, long way to avoiding any headaches, or belly aching later on.
> 
> ...


Scott and I both found the other tbiz site and the fact that it delt with travel made us both believe we would not have a conflect. It had nothing to do with this industry. Yes Scott has been in Education in the screen printing business for many years. That is his strength here. Mine has been in heat pressing. It is really not about the years of doing what we have been doing it is about the confussion of the names and the fact that they both deal with a lot of the same things. I know scott has more people working on his project then little ol me. I guess I can compare this to me being the corner grocer and walmart deciding to open across the street. Scott is trying to bring all his knowledge to people. Most would feel he should be staying out of the limelight due to all his law suits. I think there is room for Scott, Rodney and yes little ol me in this game of information. I wlll be contacting him today to work out some details that we discussed. By the way you are right about the dot net. I went on a buying spree yesterday.


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## kornitguy (Oct 17, 2008)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



Girlzndollz said:


> Agreed, 100%.  I did not buy the other top level domains for my site, but have seen it recommended time and time again, so no one can come in as the .net version of me, and try to ''pretend'' to be me or steal my customers, confuse them, etc.
> 
> [chopped to prevent wall of text, originally on page 1]
> 
> As usual, just one girlz_ "opinion"._ Best wishes to both parties involved for a mutually agreeable solution.


 
I am going to assume the concern is less about being mistaken as Lou's company and more about mistaken as being connected to Lou's company.

Yes tbiz.com exists and apparently it is a travel site? If so that makes the comparison to Lou using the same verbage moot.

Let's say you own a chevy and chevy goes out of business due to poor quality and service. Now chevy liquidates it's holdings and starts up a couple quiet dealerships called fordcars but they contiune to sell poor quality cars and have bad service. Seeing as the name ford is directly connected to the car industry and evokes a certain expectation, ford could sue this new company.

Now if they chose Heinzcars I don't think the ketchup conglomerate would have a leg to stand on in a lawsuit, though they might be able to afford to tie heinzcars up in litigation costs.

All in all simply saying that someone else already used a similar name to sell travel packages has nothing to do with educational material for garment embelishment.


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## Wheeler (Apr 15, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

I had a similer situation as this with sportdecals.com mine was sport-decals.com, I sold custom vinyl decals and he sold helmet decals and other stuff. I got a letter from attorney sayin I was diverting traffic from his site causing finacial loss and gave me so long to shut site down. 

I didnt have enough sales to justify even trying to fight it so I just shut it down.

What gets me is when I was looking for a domain name and sportdecals.com was taken, Godaddy offers you the other names and sales them to you. Its your job to make sure it doesn't violate some one elses website.

I just think its crap that Godaddy can sell somethin that isnt even theres to sell, I know it would be to hard to keeps records but you shouldn't be able to profit off of something that isn't yours to sell.
My rant for the day!!
S Wheeler

http://www.wheelerdecals.com


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## Girlzndollz (Oct 3, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



kornitguy said:


> I am going to assume


Well, we are all free to assume whatever we wish, and you are no exception,  - but, in the case of my comment above (that you quoted above) that advice given to me and that I've read regarding buying the .net domain was to prevent someone else from "impersonating" the .com site. 

PS: When I read the quote in your post, I noticed you "inserted" some of your "own text" into the quoted area. Text that I did not write. That could be confusing to someone reading the quoted comments, comments that are supposedly written all by me, Girlzndollz. 



kornitguy said:


> the concern is less about being mistaken as Lou's company and more about mistaken as being connected to Lou's company.


Could be.  I'm not sure what Lou's and Scott's exact concerns are, outside of what Lou's posted here, but whatever they are, hopefully, the parties will reach a mutually agreeable soluntion. 



kornitguy said:


> Yes tbiz.com exists and apparently it is a travel site? If so that makes the comparison to Lou using the same verbage moot.
> 
> Let's say you own a chevy and chevy goes out of business due to poor quality and service. Now chevy liquidates it's holdings and starts up a couple quiet dealerships called fordcars but they contiune to sell poor quality cars and have bad service. Seeing as the name ford is directly connected to the car industry and evokes a certain expectation, ford could sue this new company.
> 
> ...


Now, that sounds like exactly what the boyz and their laywers, and the judge (if it gets that far), will have to hash out. 

I am sure both parties can and will come up with convincing arguements if they try. That's what their lawyers are paid to do. 




Wheeler said:


> I had a similer situation as this with sportdecals.com mine was sport-decals.com, I sold custom vinyl decals and he sold helmet decals and other stuff. I got a letter from attorney sayin I was diverting traffic from his site causing finacial loss and gave me so long to shut site down.


Sorry to hear. It does seem that when there are goods being offered for sale, that adds another element to the situation, according to that site I was reading last week (linked in a previous post.)

Good point about the alternate names the registrars recommend. Though they may be free to register, they may not be wise choices. Thanks for the post.


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## badalou (Mar 19, 2006)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



> Could be.  I'm not sure what Lou's and Scott's exact concerns are, outside of what Lou's posted here, but whatever they are, hopefully, the parties will reach a mutually agreeable soluntion.


Scott and I have decided to just let it play. Our concerns were that the names were very much alike and as we are both in the same line of business we did not want to cause confusion. Anyone going to a travel site would know right away they are at the wrong site. But if they landed on either his our mine then they may just stay there as they found what they wanted and will explore it. Thus one of us may have lost a member or customer. That is the difference. We both wished each other luck in our travels and will probably meet at one of the shows. Many of us never know how big we will be and when we buy a web name we look at just that name and never think ahead. Sadly I did that as did Scott. But you guys should make this be a lesson. spen an extra few dollars and protect the name, names or like names. Did you know that there was a time that if you went to whitehouse.com you went to a porn site.. I am not going to check to see if it still works.. Best Lou


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## calitrendz (Apr 23, 2009)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



Girlzndollz said:


> Well, we are all free to assume whatever we wish, and you are no exception,  - but, in the case of my comment above (that you quoted above) that advice given to me and that I've read regarding buying the .net domain was to prevent someone else from "impersonating" the .com site.
> 
> PS: When I read the quote in your post, I noticed you "inserted" some of your "own text" into the quoted area. Text that I did not write. That could be confusing to someone reading the quoted comments, comments that are supposedly written all by me, Girlzndollz.
> 
> ...


 
Did you come up with your website name first? You can purchase any website name that you want. This is free enterprise. As far as I know they can shove it.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



calitrendz said:


> Did you come up with your website name first? You can purchase any website name that you want. This is free enterprise. As far as I know they can shove it.


Incorrect. While you are free to go out and register any name that's available you like, if it's registered or trademarked, you'll have a snowball's chance in Hell of keeping it. It will be snatched away from you quicker than you can say infringement.


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## calitrendz (Apr 23, 2009)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

Yeah that's true too. Well just think of something more creative but keep your main keyword in the title of your website so you can make it easier to get to top positions on Google for SEO


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## Wheeler (Apr 15, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

Yep Sportdecals is trademarked.. that was something else that bugged me about the whole deal.

You can take two common words and put them together and trademark it.

Letter from lawyer stated I couldn't even use those two words together in the same sentence or in the code on website.

So now I just put "Custom Sport vinyl decals" but I think they were reaching on that statement.

It knocked me way down on a google search too.


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## calitrendz (Apr 23, 2009)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

Yeah it doesn't help you out either, but you will get more quality traffic because your title is specific and has more keywords. Eventually you will get a lot of traffic if you do the right things.


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## Girlzndollz (Oct 3, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



calitrendz said:


> Did you come up with your website name first?


I think you already got some valid points about this to mull over, but to answer this question, no. I bought the website name as my second action. The first action I took was research the currently registered corporate names in my state to see if the name I wanted was available or already registered in my state. Once I found out the name I wanted to register was not taken, I then checked for the dot-com domain name. Both were available. I then registered the name with the state and registered the domain name. Hope that helps.


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## calitrendz (Apr 23, 2009)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

did register it nationally (the trademark)?


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## mrsgege (Aug 11, 2006)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

hmmm... something to think abut when looking for domain names.


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## kornitguy (Oct 17, 2008)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*



Girlzndollz said:


> Well, we are all free to assume whatever we wish, and you are no exception,  - but, in the case of my comment above (that you quoted above) that advice given to me and that I've read regarding buying the .net domain was to prevent someone else from "impersonating" the .com site.
> 
> PS: When I read the quote in your post, I noticed you "inserted" some of your "own text" into the quoted area. Text that I did not write. That could be confusing to someone reading the quoted comments, comments that are supposedly written all by me, Girlzndollz.
> 
> ...


Sorry about that. Was just trying to cut down on extra text in the post and just grab a couple points to reply to. 

I'm gonna copyright "the" and sue all the newspapers ;p


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## DavidRobison (Dec 30, 2009)

Does anyone know of any single url registration that was lost to someone else over copyright issues? I don't believe it has ever happened. Registering a url is a way that many have made a lot of money. If I were to go register say Delta Air Lines - Airline Tickets and Airfare to Worldwide Destinations and offered it for sale (assuming it was available in the first place) then I could make a lot of money selling that url to say Delta airlines or Delta apparel. Copyright laws don't prevent anyone from owning something they protect registered intellectual properties from being infringed.
If I went out and made a site using the name they might be able to sue me for infringement but that would be a civil matter and even if they won they wouldn't then OWN the url without a purchase from me.
Infringement is so misunderstood and used as a reason to do questionable things.
The vast majority of infringement cases I've seen were unsupportable claims by people with a lot of money who intended to scare someone else away from something they wanted. Case in point was the Atlanta Olympic commitee and CLC claiming to own the rights to "Atlanta 1996". They even illegally confiscated goods based on the unsupportable claim until they tried to confiscate goods from the US Postal service and had their buts waxed for it. Just because its registered does not give anyone true copyright protection. Best advice I can give anyone is do your homework and do what's right.


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## Brenda G (Feb 10, 2007)

*Re: Scott Fresner New Website*

What's not mentioned in all of these posts is copyright/Trademark protections. Depending on what your domain name is, there is opportunity to protect via trademark....again, talk to a good lawyer when you set up a business name and any domain name.....there are also different types of trademarks. Some protect a business domain name for use on anything via the internet.....probably one of several category selections each of us should be making when we submit for trademarks (you can "buy" multiple categories: some specific, some very broad). Obviously, some domain names are so common they can't be trademarked but it's always worth a shot.


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