Brandpa aims never to list domains that conflict with well known trademarks, or which could be seen as trying to take advantage of existing company or brand names.

For example, we would reject “Google.com” with extra or missing letters, as this is clearly an attempt to take advantage of that company – so-called typosquatting.

Trademark law is complex and it is not possible for us to complete a full trademark search on every domain; furthermore trademarks are specific to individual countries and specific industries. For example, several companies have trademarked “Apple”, and the presence of a trademark would not prevent a new company from being called (say) AppleWine.com. But it might prevent them from taking ApplePhones.com.

Our policy is to avoid names that could cause our customers problems. We do this because:

• We would be selling a bad product to our customers, one which could get them in legal trouble or cause them to lose the domain (see UDRP)
• Even if a domain was not subject to legal action, it could limit our customer’s ability to protect or own their trademarks
• This would be damaging to our reputation and ultimately to your sales
• We prefer to err on the side of caution; turning down a few more domains is better than an bad experience for our customers