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I recently returned from a long offline break, and thus before “starting anew” with my various online activities, including wordpress plugin development, I spent a fair amount of time researching the changes in the fast-paced online world.

Whilst browsing around the Wordpress.org site, I noticed some information regarding the naming of domains with wordpress.

Now it should be noted that this website has been live for over 9 months, and at the time I registered the domain name, I hadn’t seen this reference on the Wordpress.org site

So I started to do some more research on trademarks in general, and in particular the Wordpress trademark status.

Reading the June 14th 2006 IRC Wordpress Meetup gave me a very clear understanding of what I still regard as a not very well documented trademark policy.

[17:18] Something that we were unaware when we started (but seems logical after a bit of thought) was that WordPress is a trademark and that we shouldn’t use it in domain names.

My next step in research was whether Wordpress™ had an application to become a registered trademark.

Off to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website, whete you can perform searches not only on awarded patents and trademarks, but also those that are pending.

There I found the application for the Wordpress Trademark

Defending Trademarks

There is lots of information on the internet regarding defending trademarks, but here are some good case studies news stories to help readers understand.

First up, Linus Torvalds defending the Linux trademark.
Here is a 5 year old quote Linus Torvalds made that was used in the piece.

“Trademark law requires that the trademark owner police the use of the trademark,” Torvalds said in the 2000 posting. “This is nasty, because it means, for example, that a trademark owner has to be shown as caring about even small infringements, because otherwise the really bad guys can use as their defense that ‘Hey, we may have misused it, but look at those other cases that they didn’t go after, they obviously don’t care.’”

Slightly more recently, Robert Scoble was discussing Google lawyers and trademarks. He makes it quite clear that defending trademarks is a perfectly normal thing to do.

Much more recently, Apple has been clamping down on websites that use the word “pod” in all shapes and sizes, including variations such as “podcast” which many feel has become a general term.

General Use

The danger for trademark holders is clear. They have to defend their trademarks, or face the danger of their trademark becoming watered down to the point it can’t be defended even for situations of direct competitors using it to compete against them.

Wordpress Trademark

Back to the issue in hand…

First off, noone from Wordpress has approached me regarding my domain name. I am taking voluntary action, which may also be looked on as preemtive.

I don’t want the Wordpress brand to be diluted by my actions, and I recently explained this to Matt in an email.

Wordpress is a great tool, and I honestly want it to flourish. It is in my financial interests for Wordpress to have a strong trademark, so they can benefit financially from the trademark, and continue to grow.

Wordpress Domain Naming Solutions

Matt suggested to my to use “WP” in the domain name rather than “Wordpress”, as many have done on other sites, such as wp-plugins.net and wpplugins.org .

This is actually the route I have taken, but I have some reservations. Both the above mentioned domains themselves could claim that “wpplugins” (and derivatives thereof) are a trademark.

To this end I have tried to contact Dr Dave who of the 2 above mentioned sites has the most possible “prior claim” to the term “wplugins”.

That being said, I have taken action based upon what I hope will be the final result of a discourse with him, as I am not trying to compete as a database of all wordpress plugins. I might at some time list the ones I like to use on my own blogs, but developing plugins will remain my core focus for this site.

Action list

Register domain and point it to the site
Modify backlinks where I can
Use Google’s webmaster tools to point out to Google that the old domain and the new domain are one and the same, and I want results to show for the new domain. Google do not like duplicate content, and they have provided a way for webmasters to take the initiative to fix the listings themselves.
301 redirects - I am not actually sure if they are needed with the new Google interface, but they will probably be needed for MSN and Yahoo. It should be noted, I didn’t move the site, just pointed a new domain name at it, and changed a lot of options in Wordpress to show the right domain name. I will make the changes after I have had a visit from all the bots.

and of course…

Promote the site (with new domain name)
Create lots more plugins

Action List (for others)

Don’t register domains which include the word “wordpress”. It is bad for the future of Wordpress, which in turn might also affect your own interests/business.

And as a footnote, I haven’t used “™” in reference to Wordpress (or other brands for that matter) throughout this article, i.e. Wordpress™ because honestly I am lazy as I think most people are, but I do acknowledge that Wordpress is a trademark, and is soon to be a registed trademark of Automattic Inc.