After the "Check Availability" 20 minute task, you should now have a list of potential names for your web site. Your next job is to check for trademarks. You cannot use a registered trademark belonging to another company as your domain name without the owner's permission. You also need to check your tag line to be sure it's not already being used by someone else.

Your 20 Minute Task

Your task is to check that neither your domain name nor your tag line is someone else's intellectual property.

United States Trademarks

To check for registered trademarks in the United States, go to www.uspto.gov, the web site of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

• Click on the Trademarks link.
• Click on Search TM database (TESS).
• Click New User Form Search (Basic).
• Type the keywords from your favorite domain name in the Search Term: box and click the Submit Query button. It will tell you whether there are any trademarks, dead or alive, for the term.
• Repeat the process until you've checked your best available domain names. You should be able to check twenty or thirty domain names in the 20 minutes you have.

Trademarks in Other Countries

If you're going to do business outside the United States, you may want to check trademarks in other databases.

• European Union
• China
• Russia
• Japan

You may be able to search for trademarks in countries not listed above by typing the country name and "trademarks" in your favorite search engine.

Checking domain names will expand beyond twenty minutes unless you're just checking one or two names. If necessary, you can come back to do another 20 minutes on this search.

Check a Search Engine

Once you've checked that your domain name and tag line are not registered trademarks, you should use Google or your other favorite search engine to check if someone else is using them but hasn't registered them. To do that, go to your favorite search engine. Type the words of your domain name in the search box. If there's no exact match, you're probably okay. Then type your tag line in the search box. This time, enclose it in quotation marks to check for an exact match.

Check with an Intellectual Property Attorney If Necessary

Your search should tell you if your potential domain name is a common trademark. For most cases, checking the sources above is probably enough, but you have the ultimate responsibility to assure that your domain name doesn't violate law. If you have any question, check with an intellectual property (IP) attorney.

If you search for a domain name that contains your own registered trademark and someone else is using it, you may be able to get the current owner to stop using it and turn it over to you. See the ICANN Dispute Policy for more information.

At the end of this 20 minutes, you'll should have a list of viable domain names and ought to be reasonably sure your tag line is usable. File your results in your "Domain Name" folder.