Vogue Magazine is forcing us to surrender our domain name

As we lose our domain name, we could lose the loyal following that has taken us four years and thousands of posts to achieve.

WE DEPEND ON YOU TO SURVIVE! To keep us thriving, join us in our new territory and bookmark our brand new domain TheStylishCity.com to your reader. Tell our story to your friends and accept our new address [email protected] into your mailbox.

You are intelligent, savvy women and many of you own your own blogs or run your company’s websites, so I want you to listen carefully: YOU ARE NOT SAFE! When there is a common noun within your domain name — take “vogue” for instance — that simple little word may very well be copyrighted by a large company like Advanced Publishers (Vogue Magazine’s publishers), who will prevent you from using it.

When I first received a letter from Advanced Publishers’ lawyer, I thought it was a bad joke. In a country that relishes in freedom of speech, how could anyone prevent me from using a word? This is how: a company like Advanced Publishers’ has millions to spend and hoards an army of lawyers who send thousands of letter to unsuspecting people like ME. Most of said people, myself included, cannot afford proper representation and are forced to surrender their domain and fold their websites upon first threat. I am frustrated and upset because I have checked with a couple of lawyers, got conflicting information, and have therefore decided to not further risk my livelihood. To their lawyer’s admission, Advance Publishers has thousands of trademarks. These are only a few of the trademarks this bullying company has filed for in the last couple of months alone:

FNO, Fashion’s Night Out, 30 things every woman should have and know by the age she is 30, Details, Daily Beauty Reporter, 30 things, workout in the park, voguecabulary, the beauty expert, blog star, etc.

What is so hard for me to understand is why Vogue Magazine spends time and money filling for all of these trademarks and litigating against those who dare use them, and they don’t spend a few bucks necessary to buy all of the domains that contain the word “vogue”. Buying a domain is at most nine dollars a pop and a lawsuit is hundreds of thousands of dollars. This all causes me to wonder if they just wait around for the domains to generate traffic before they swoop in and pull the plug and grab it for themselves. It seems hard to believe that a lawyer who dedicates his time to protecting the word “vogue” is just noticing now that we are using “his word.” There are hundreds of other websites using it too. Is it possible that they wait around for domains to become valuable?

We hope to be able in the future to continue to provide you with the same innovative content, and a reliable home where you are always able to find all of the latest New York sample sales listed in one place.

Long live fashion and our ability to use it to define who we are while spending within our budget, something Vogue Magazine would certainly not approve of either.