Domain Names: Don't Use Realtor

Posted by Stephen Weyrick | Tags: mango blog

I have been working on a site for a local realtor in Carson City, Nevada.  In a sit down meeting we decided to purchase a list of domain names which all included the string Realtor, carsoncityrealtor.com, carsoncityrealtor.org etc... I have come to find out that Realtor is a trade marked name for the National Association of Realtors and cannot be used in conjuction with a location, which is reserved for local and state realtor boards.  I am having trouble understanding how such a generic name can be Trade Marked, and I honestly had no idea that this might be a problem.  Its seems wrong to me, but I wouldn't want to go through a legal battle over a $10 domain name.  I just wanted to give the ColdFusion community a heads up in case someone else was in a similiar situation or thinking about purchasing domain names with the word realtor in them.  After reading forums and blogs that talk about this, it seems like a lot of people have had this problem.  Below is a email that I recieved from NAR:

The terms REALTOR, REALTORS, and REALTOR-ASSOCIATE, as well as the REALTOR block "R" logo, are all federally registered collective membership marks owned by the National Association.  Collective membership marks are a type of trademark, which, rather than indicating the source of a product or service, identify the user of the membership mark as a member of a particular group, in this case the National Association.  The National Association has over 1,200,000 members each of whom is licensed to use one or more of the membership marks to identify themselves and their real estate businesses in accordance with the rules of the National Association.


If you are not a member your use of the membership marks is incorrect and not authorized by the National Association.  Because the use has not been authorized it may also be viewed as an infringement of the National Association's legal rights in its membership marks under the federal Lanham Act and other state and federal laws.  To eliminate this potential source of conflict, we would appreciate your cooperation in revising your domain name to eliminate the use of the membership marks.  Many times this is as simple as substituting an appropriate job title for the term being used; for example, real estate broker can often be used without making any other changes to the text.  If you would like to read more about trademarks and the rights of trademark owners, a number of sites on the Internet address this topic.

June 23, 2009

2 responses so far ↓

WilGeno - Jun 23, 2009 at 12:44 PM

I work for a company that does nothing but Real Estate web sites and we provide the MLS Search in over 240 MLS Markets.

One of the rules for domain names we've run into is that some MLS's prohibit the sue of MLS in the domain name. Which for was a a bit of a bummer because our branded and trademarked product name is Mlsfinder.com. But we worked around that problem by using another URL for the same product in those markets.

Wil Genovese
Sr. Web Application Developer

Stephen Weyrick - Jun 25, 2009 at 11:00 AM

Thanks for your comment Wil, at least I know someone in the ColdFusion community has dealt with the same kind of issue. Since you do work in Real Estate, I was wondering if you knew any way to get MLS listing data for free or at low cost. I am looking at adding local listing's for particular Realtors, and I was wondering if there might be a cost efficient way to do this.

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