Ask HN: Domain name takedown order, what do I do?

3 points·pselbert··2 comments

We sell UI subscriptions for Oban, a background job runner in Elixir. The site runs on the domain oban.dev, for which we've received a takedown order due to the trademarked word "Oban" in the domain name.

We're a two person business and of course we'll comply with the order. Can we change the domain name and call it a day, or do we need to rename/rebrand the entire project?

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So, words alone, and domain names can't be trademarked especially common ones like Oban which is a name that's in common use. The trademark would have to be against something more specific like font, color, stylization, etc... That would cause your Oban to be confused with their Oban. I don't see how anyone would confuse your site with Oban Scotland or Oban whiskey.

As a 2 person project I'm not suggesting you dump money you probably don't have in to fighting this but you should for sure not just roll over unless you intentionally were trying to cause confusion. You don't say the entity that sent the trademark notice, but my impression is that confusion is not your intention.

You should prepare for rebranding just to be ready, but you should also push back and not just comply either.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.

We're trying to prepare for an alternate name and all of the changes that entails and hoping that a domain change is sufficient.

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