Hi,

I have a website that offer free products (for now) and I registered my domain a year and a half ago with a major registrar. My domain is very popular. Another company that has a trademark on a similar name as my domain name has sent me a cease and desist letter to stop using my domain because it is confusingly similar to their trademark. They have their trademark from few years before I registered my domain. Unfortunately we are in the same business too.

Here is a close example to make things clear:
I own myapplebasket.com and the company's website is applesbasket.com and their trade mark is "applesbasket and farming".

According to the Intellectual Property laws in United States:

a) Am I infringing on their trademark or not? Do they have a strong legal case against me in court?

If I am unintentionally infringing on their trademark and they have a strong legal case against me then I will move my website to a new domain and redirect my current website visitors to my new site. I want to keep my old domain for at least 6 months for technical reasons.

b) Can the company contact my registrar and "Legally" transfer my domain to their company even after I complied with their cease and desist letter and moved my website to a new domain but kept the old domain to redirect my old visitors? By keeping the old domain for old visitor redirects am I still infriging on their trademark?

Has anyone had any experience dealing with this type of situations?

Thanks!

Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html and http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/index.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.