Selling email addresses - legal/problem question

[DougBarned]

Hi all

I was working for a company, 'something' trading limited, for almost 2 years. They have 'something'-trading.co.uk as their site in the uk. Basically they have traders that go out and direct sell their stuff to customers.

I've left the company for another job and have purchased 'something'-trader.co.uk with the intention of selling email addresses with this domain to the traders. At the moment they tend to have generic hotmail or gmail accounts. I'm hoping that they will jump at the chance to seem more professional with a 'yourname@something-trading.co.uk' address.

Anyway - I'm just wanting to ask if anyone knows of any problem doing this... I can't think of any reason why thier would be, but are thier any legal issues?

Should I 'ask' them if it's OK out of courtesy?

Thanks in advance!

/Doug

[Boss Hog]

Did the other company sell e-mail addresses to?

Are you talking about contacting their customers to sell the e-mail addresses to?

To be honest I don't quite get what you are saying.

[DougBarned]

Sorry, wasn't sure if it'd be clear - it's a bit complicated and I don't want to name the actual company.

No, the other company didn't sell email addresses. Yes, I would be contacting their traders (not could be called customers). For the company, think Avon , with traders being the 'Avon lady' - if that means anything to you.

Say you sold Pepsi from a shop, you don't work for pepsi, but you've payed them to be able to sell their drinks. You don't have and can't get a bosshog@pepsi.com address, but you can get a bosshog@pepsi-seller.co.uk address. Would Pepsi have a problem? Bear in mind that it's not pepsi and the word 'something' in 'something'-trader.co.uk is a normal word as the company name rather than a made up word as the brand.

Hope that makes more sense...?

Thanks for trying to help :)

/Doug

[Boss Hog]

I see what you mean now, I am no legal eagle so don't really know much about this, if the word is generic then I don't see there being a problem, although you could just ask them to see how they feel about it.

Having said that, if it was something like auto-trader.co.uk, generic words yet a well known brand then I don't know actually :icon_dunno:

Personally I would ask here...

Legal - UK Business Forums

...as you will get a professional response to this type of question.

[DougBarned]

Thanks for replying so quickly :)

Great link , thanks! I'll see what luck I get over there...

Cheers

/Doug

[treemonkey]

I can't see any problems with that either.

The only problem might be if the domain name contained a registered trademark like "Pepsi". Then Pepsi might dispute the use of the domain name as it infringes on their intellectual property rights.