Using portion of name in URL

[soaknfused]

Hi,
I am curious about something that was mentioned to me today. I recently started a website (forum) that is dedicated to helping a specific group of individuals. It is free and not selling anything nor representing itself to be anything other than a site for a certain group of people. I chose a name for the site based upon the intended member base which includes a word that is used as part of the name of a school. I have read their copyright and tm notices on their website, and the single word is not listed separately and is a word in use in the English language as well. I don't want to post the exact details here, but I will give you a close "example"

college in existence is: "XXXXXXX University of Blah Blah or XXXXXXX College" etc.

My site name is XXXXXXXstudent dot com

They have not made any claims or contacted me about this, but i would like to know if I will potentially have any problems in the future due to this. They are aware of the site and sent a simple email asking for information with a statement that "we are always striving to provide more for our students" we have many online resources etc etc etc.. but nowhere in the message had they mentioned anything that sounded like more than a "hey, we'd like to find out more about your site" type of thing.

I would rather change something ahead of time as opposed to waiting until it is extremely popular and have to change it then.. Hope you great minds can shed some light on this for me.

thanks in advance.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

It is impossible to give you any reasonable opinion without knowing the specific name. If the "XXXX" is a generic word that may be related to education, e.g. Studying University, Studying Student, then it would be difficult for there to be a trademark protecting that phrase. If the word is unique and unrelated to education, e.g. Bottle University, Bottle Student, then it's a little bit more likely that trademark protection might extend to the name itself. The word "bottle" and "university" or "bottle" and "student" may not go together in the English language and identifiable as a product or service originating from the mark holder. If there is a likelihood of confusion that your site might be associated with the mark holder, it's possible there could be trademark issues. Perhaps this gives you a greater insight into the thought behind trademark law.