"Trademarks aside" is too strong of a qualifier. Trademark protection
isn't nearly
as broad as people seem to assume. It's restricted by
geography and by type of
thing you are selling. (That's right; if
you're not selling, trademark law isn't
relevant.) The .com/.org./.net
TLDs are neither geographically limited nor linked
to any class of
goods or services. Therefore, a generic domain should not in itself
be
able to violate trademark. That is, if you have trademark "Foo" for
your
brand of widgets, someone else could also use "Foo" for something
completely unrelated.
"foo.com" isn't intrinsicly linked to *either*
class (and might not even be related
to the country in which the
trademarks are held) and therefore can't, in itself,
be a violation.It's worth considering that EVERY SINGLE LETTER of the Roman alphabet
is
someone's trademark. There's barely any common words left that
aren't trademarked.
(Disclaimer:
I'm not a lawyer. But I hate to see entire words being
stolen out of our language
just because someone sticks a TM by them.)
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