On a scale of one to ten for trademark protection, generic names rate a zero, while distinctive
names are a ten. In between are all sorts of names that aren't usually distinctive by themselves, but
aren't generic either. This "ordinary names" category includes:
•names that use common terms in a standard arrangement for example, healthanswers.com for,
you guessed it, online health information
•place names such as DowntownNews.com
•personal names for example, troweprice.com for T. Rowe Price investment funds;
castlelaw.com for the Castleman Law Firm
•words that describe the product or service, such as i-courthouse.com for an online court that
resolves disputes and allows Web surfers to serve as jurors; stampfinders.com, a full-service
exchange for stamp collectors; and cleanswell.com for a website that sells household cleaners, and
•words of praise, such as bestpetshop.com (unless it becomes distinctive over time, as in
bestbuys.com).
Misspellings or alternative spellings (such as "lite") cannot make an ordinary term ("light")
distinctive. The same is true for common foreign language equivalents, like "le" for "the" and "casa"
for "house." As a result, bestpetshop.com predictably will get little legal protection as a trademark.
By contrast, a fanciful domain name like petopia.com is distinctive and easily protected as a
trademark.
Protection If the Name Becomes Well Known
If an ordinary name becomes associated in the public mind with a product or service, the name can
become a distinctive and legally protectible trademark. This is called the "secondary meaning" rule.
Many famous and effective trademarks, like McDonald's or The Yellow Pages, originally consisted
of ordinary terms that, over time, became widely recognized as product and service identifiers and
so were transformed into strong marks. From its humble beginning as an ordinary mark,
McDonald's has turned into one of the strongest marks in the world.
Similarly, when it first hit the market, the name Ben & Jerry's for a brand of ice cream was not
distinctive and not entitled to much protection. However, as the Ben & Jerry's company advertised
its products and as the products became well known (actually, adored) among the nation's ice
cream buffs, the Ben & Jerry's trademark grew in distinctiveness. Now, the mark is highly distinctive
as a brand of upscale ice cream and the company's website is named, of course,
benandjerrys.com. Other examples include schwab.com for Charles Schwab, Christies.com for
auctions, sportingnews.com for the well-known sports periodical, and etrade.com for online stock
trading.
Using a mark that can't be protected until it has acquired a secondary meaning can present a
serious problem to your small business. You must accept the fact that the mark will be weak, and
subject to possible use by others, until its reputation has been built up. If you can spend a lot of
money to promote the mark when it's first used, you may be able to speed up the process of public
recognition.
Distinctive Names
Distinctive, memorable domain names can make a strong impression on customers and are legally strong trademarks, easier to protect against use by others than are generic or ordinary names.
They make customers think, "That's clever," or "Gee, I wonder what that means?" A product or
service name can be distinctive for a number of reasons, including:
•The name is coined (made up) for example, flooz.com, datek.comor multex.com.
•The combination of words and letters in the name is so creative that no one else has come up with
it for example, think360.com for services using cutting-edge three-dimensional photographic
techniques.
•The name carries a clever double meaning for example, google.com is an online search site;
google is a word used by mathematicians to describe numbers beyond the trillion range. Another
example: Pangea, a bioinformation company, uses doubletwist.com for its domain name,
suggesting the famous double-helix structure of DN
•Certain words in the name are completely arbitrary in the context of the underlying product or
service, as in online retailer Amazon.com; rhino.com, the website of Rhino Records; fool.com, the
site for the Motley Fool investment advice firm and dogpile.com for search services.
•The name as a whole cleverly suggests the product without describing it, as in lendingtree.com for
loans, hungryminds.com for online education, magicaldesk.com for secretarial services,
medscape.com for health services and bottomdollar.com for a shopping site.
Creating a Distinctive Domain Name
George Eastman, the founder of Kodak and a man with an eye for a good trademark, could have
been talking about domain names when he suggested that trademarks should:
•be short
•be vigorous
•be easily spelled, and
•mean nothing.
Some other good advice is to make your domain name:
•pronounceable
•memorable, and
•legally available.
The key to creating a distinctive domain name is cleverness. Coined words such as Exxon are the
ultimate in clever because they are created from thin air. But you don't need to make up new words
to have a distinctive name. As we have seen, distinctive names often consist of ordinary words
used creatively and in an unusual context or words that evoke fanciful associations. You may also
want to use ordinary words that indirectly suggest what the underlying product or service is, without
describing it outright.
While it may seem that all the good names have been taken, there is in fact a large supply. But like
diamonds, they usually aren't just lying on the ground for the taking; a little mining, cutting and
polishing may be required to find them and make them shine. Some possible sources:
•new combinations of existing words such as ubid.com for auctions, smartmoney.com for personal
finance calculators, buyitnow.com for a retail site
•combinations of word roots, like intelihealth.com for health services, bibliofind.com or alibris.com
for book finding services, travelocity.com for travel services, invesco.com for investment services
•distinctive foreign words such as Sirocco.com or Soleil.com
•abandoned names that are no longer in use, but that were once famous. They may bring a certain
cachet to your product or service if their image corresponds to the one you want to project.
Finding Unclaimed Marks
One online subscription service claims to have an inside track to domain names that were not
renewed after their two-year registration expired. The service provides a list of these recently
expired registrations on a weekly basis for a $20 subscription fee. While we don't endorse this
service or provide any guarantees, such a list might provide a fruitful source of domain name ideas.
You can reach the service at unclaimeddomains.com.
If you do decide to use one of the names on this list, make sure that the name isn't still being used
as a trademark on or off the Web. | 
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