This post concerns the use of trademarks on a website hosted in Sweden. The website is a dotcom-domain with the United States, Europe, Russia, China and India as the main markets. The overall goal of my questions is to avoid being sued in any country or state (and I expect abiding by the laws in the United States as a whole a good benchmark to start with).
Assume the website ranks "things" according to how much money has been spent through the website on each thing. For example, the website might set up a race between X and Y. Assume it currently shows that $1200 has been spent on X and $1150 on Y. A user, who likes Y more than X and has money to spare, pays $100 to make Y rank ahead of X. For doing this, the user gets a post on his/her facebook wall, saying "FirstName FamilyName donated $100 for Y on website.com." It will be clear to paying users that all they get is that the spending counter for the thing of their choice will increase with the amount they pay, and that they will get a post about it on their facebook wall; no portion of the money will go to/toward X or Y.
My questions concern what I can use as X and Y on this website:
Fredrik
Assume the website ranks "things" according to how much money has been spent through the website on each thing. For example, the website might set up a race between X and Y. Assume it currently shows that $1200 has been spent on X and $1150 on Y. A user, who likes Y more than X and has money to spare, pays $100 to make Y rank ahead of X. For doing this, the user gets a post on his/her facebook wall, saying "FirstName FamilyName donated $100 for Y on website.com." It will be clear to paying users that all they get is that the spending counter for the thing of their choice will increase with the amount they pay, and that they will get a post about it on their facebook wall; no portion of the money will go to/toward X or Y.
My questions concern what I can use as X and Y on this website:
- Can I use trademarks? If yes, what are the requirements, e.g. disclaimer?
- Can I use city names, e.g. Cambridge, MA and Princeton, NJ?
- Can I use country names?
- Can I use distorted trademarks, e.g. "Columb1a" instead of "Columbia," "Goldm@n Zachs" instead of "Goldman Sachs," "P3psi" instead of "Pepsi?"
a) What degree of distortion is necessary for this to be allowed? How many letters need to be changed? - Does the nature of the website affect the answers to these questions? Consider the two cases:
a) The website donates at least 50% of revenues to charity.
b) The website targets rich people and emphasises their ability to aimlessly waste their money on things like this, while normal people have to struggle just to pay the rent. In doing this, the website uses politically charged phrases like "Live like the upper class. [...] Absolutely no money will go to charity or socialist things like welfare for the working class." - (off-topic, optional question) Should this be regarded as a commercial website where users buy products or is this a recreational website where some users donate money to the website?
Fredrik