You can easily go to SamsClub.com from Sams.com by clicking the ad on the page Sams.com domain name forwards you to!

If you were to visit Sams.com as I did the other day, you will not end up at the massive wholesale club Sam’s but you land on a site call Informit.com, which appears to own a publishing company by the name of Sams. Since Sams.com redirects to a specific page on Informit.com, it just so happens on that page, is a Sam’s Club Ad on the upper right of the page.

This is almost always a no, no to do because of trademark laws and profiting from a trademark with a similarly confusing name.

I tried to contact the owners of Sams.com / Informit.com but never got a reply to the questions that I sent earlier this week. My questions to them were not all about owning the Sams.com domain, because they have any right to the domain as anybody else with the generic nature of it, but I did want to know if they had a partnership directly with Sam’s Club™ putting up the Ad on the page the Sams.com domain name forwards to.

The URL if you were to click on the ad doesn’t appear to be a direct partnership to me, as the ad uses a Double Click (aka Google Ad Network) link. http://clickserve.cc-dt.com/link/tplclick?lid=41000000024913789&pubid=21000000000243073

CC-DT.com is owned by Google. If this was a "paid partnership" directly from Sam’s Club, the ad image likely would simply direct to SamsClub.com.

I personally think that if this is not a direct partnership with Sam’s Club, this one little ad that the Sams.com domain name forwards to on the Informit.com site, runs the risk of Sam’s Club filing a trademark infringement against the Sams.com owners. The reason it can become infringing is because the similarity of the Sams.com domain and Sam’s Club’s name. Sam’s Club is known by many as simply "Sam’s". By Informit.com placing the ad is where the problem comes in. This ad VERY LIKELY get’s a great deal of clicks by people visiting Sams.com intending to find Sam’s Club’s site. Seeing the ad and the familiar logo on the page (most not even knowing they are on the informit.com site by the redirect) end up clicking the ad as if it is an "enter" button to get into the site for Sam’s Club they were intending to reach in the first place by visiting Sams.com . Clicks turn into revenue from that ad, which means the Sams.com owners are profiting from a registered trademark they do not own.

Interestingly enough, the Sams.com domain forwards to http://www.informit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=136371 (screen shot above) which if you were to browse around on the Informit.com directly, the Sams page really doesn’t look anything like the rest of the site! That one page the Sam’s ad is on is missing both the Left and Right sidebars! Doing this, makes the ad stick out more IMO.

That one single ad likely makes the owner of the Sams.com domain name a lot of money! If the ad is not from a direct partnership, IMO, I think the owners of Sams.com are infringing by providing the ad on the page to earn a profit using the confusing similar Sams.com domain and displaying a Sam’s Club ad on the page. Sams.com IMO is running a pretty high risk of potentially losing the Sams.com domain name and potentially some cash also. The clicks the ad gets, Sam’s Club is paying Google to get them and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind getting some of that money back.

As a domain name owner and if there may be questions as to if doing something may infringe on a trademark, the best idea is not to do it. Owning a generic domain name like Sams.com and displaying an advertisement for a company that holds a trademark and your name could be confusingly similar to that mark, do not place an ad on it by the mark holder. The page minus the ad would be perfectly fine and no questions would be raised IMO. Although it may be tempting, you are likely running a pretty high risk doing something similar.