Domain Names and Trademarks

[flyingpylon]

I've discovered some good keywords for a particular topic that also happen to be trademarked.

For example (these aren't the real words):

New York Yankees

newyorkyankees.com is owned by the official organization, but new-york-yankees.net is unregistered.

If I were to register the hyphenated version, would I just be asking for trouble? What are some ways to get around this issue? Should I insert another word such as "fans" or whatever (thus decreasing keyword density) in order to avoid being sued?

Paul

[Chris]

The chance of you being sued is minimal. Trademarks law is much more lenient than copyright law.

If you were passing your site off as the official site/product you could get in trouble -- or if you sold a competing product you could get in trouble. But if you are simply making a site about the trademarked thing, and you clearly mark that it is indeed trademarked by soandso, you should be fine.