I was reading the story about the little Alaska thrift store that end up having to change it’s business name after Gov. Sarah Palin mentioned about the "Out Of The Closet" thrift store in her Alaska town.
Little did the store owner in Alaska know that Out of the closet is trademarked for a thrift store already since 1997 and the trademark holders of the brand Out of the closet thrift store asked for the name change and the Alaskan store owner agreed.
The new name of the store is now Second Run.
So why am I writing about this? For one, it is always best to check and see if a domain name you are considering or buying is trademarked. Secondly, after reading the Yahoo! story about the name change, Yahoo! list’s the two people in the story web address….
OutOfTheClosetAlaska.com <—- LOL, Must of forgot about the domain name… So maybe this Alaska thrift shop owner that thought she was in the all clear after changing her stores name to Second Run, would be good to go. Her domain name happens to be infringing as well.
The Out of the closet mark is for "retail store services and thrift store services".
Second Run, happens to still use a trademarked term in it’s domain name since a new domain is not being used since the name change from what I can tell. On it’s blog http://outoftheclosetalaska.com/blog.asp and a posting on Nov 19, 2008 talks about the business name change.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The Store Formerly Known as Out of the Closet!As many of you know, we have been forced to change our store name, as “Out of the Closet” is trademarked and registered nationally by the Aids Healthcare Foundation.
The Alaska store owner happens to use the trademarked term in their domain still (out of the closet), and offers very similar services the mark holder does.
OutOfTheCloset.org (owners of the mark) just might be asking for a Domain Name Change to follow the business name change of this Alaska store.
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