Trademark And Domain Name Difference. The term trademark is often used in a general sense to refer to both trademarks and service marks. The trademarking process is much longer and much more complex compared to getting a domain name.
State and federal laws protect trademarks that are memorable and distinctive. Any names that directly reference services or products on the market are trademarks. Domain names are used to locate and bring users to a specific website or place on the internet.
The owner of a trademark has exclusive rights to the trademark and can prevent anyone else from using it.
Court of Appeals recently ruled that a business must use its domain name to sell goods or services in order to protect the name even if a competitor starts to use the name after you registered the domain. Several identical trademarks can coexist on the INPI registers whereas there cannot be two identical domain names in the same extension. It takes more than a year to register a trademark. Therefore you will want to conduct trademark and other online searches as described in the trademarks section of this article below.