So about six weeks ago my mum got a letter sent to my home address in Canada that I had half been expecting but also dreading. It’s from Internet Intellectual Property Management firm called Demys and they don’t appear to be too happy about my domain name: London-2012-Games.com. Oops!
I guess I came onto their radar when I started ranking on page one of Google. Stupid Google, blowing my cover like that. That’s the only time getting to the first page would ever be a bad thing. I guess there’s been some precident set with another domain name MyLondon2012.com which now redirects to an official Olympics site because then won the battle The decision in that case can all be seen here.
It seems like I could be screwed. My domain has London and 2012 in it which are both, annoyingly and seemingly impossibly, registered trademarks. I’m not sure there’s any way around it and I’ve been debating what to do since the letter came. My approach of not doing anything will probably bite me in the arse at some point in the future. I don’t think my usual strategy of avoiding the issue will help in this case!
So I’m thinking I’ll need to come up with some new domain name. But these people can’t be contacted for specific issues (or at least that’s what their letter says) and I’m afraid that even if I cut ‘London’ and ‘2012’ out of the domain name, they’ll come after me if I use those words on my site at all under the stance that it causes confusion, which seems to be their platform for these crackdowns.
This untimely letter has screwed my link-building efforts. I’ve already put a tonne of work into building links to my Olympics site which, I suppose, is why it’s doing so will with Google. I hate the thought at losing all of that work I’ve put in (I can changed the links in many of my articles but not in all, plus finding all the links in this blog and changing them and contacting others sites I’ve done link swaps with… ARG!) and essentially having to start from scratch without the extra added boost of having the keywords in the domain name (which I think is huge for ranking well).
So I’m at a loss for what to do here. Keep going as though nothing has happened and hope they forget about me? Or create a new domain name, build new links, change old links and hope they don’t come after me again? I feel like I’ve been writing an email for a year and then it accidentally got deleted before it sent and now I have to write it all again. It’s a bit soul destroying!
Any suggestions? Words of support? I think I need a hug.
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