Coopyright and Trademark issues

[bijan_sha]

Hi,
1) I have a website that sells cellphon handsets and accessories and also publishes news about cellphones. When a user comes to my home home, I do have a picture of a couple of phones that I sell in my site and a picture of couple phones that I don't selll (they are there to make the site look nice) Do I need to get permission in order to publish these pictures in my site? Will I be in trouble in any ways because I am using the picture of a phone?
2) Let's say my site is called aksflc.com. Do I need to get a trademark for "adkflc" or I need to get a trademark for "adkflc.com" ?
3) Similar question as part 2. Is it better to register the company under name"adkflc" or it's better to register it under "adkflc.com" ?
Sorry I did not release the link to my site. It's still in the developing process.
Regards, Bijan Shahrokhi

[Chris]

1. No, not for the ones you DO sell. For the ones you do not sell you don't need permission really unless you're using them in some misleading fashion such as indicating you do sell them when you don't or using their pictures to sell different phones.

2. Neither, or both. And you don't need to "get" a trademark. You can call anything you want a trademark and just put TM after it. Registered trademarks get the (R) symbol, that is the difference. All told, trademark is the weakest form of intellectual property.

3. Neither, either, your company name does not have to exactly match your domain name. Your domain name is an address, nothing more.

[bijan_sha]

Thanks for the response Chris.
2. What do you mean I can call anything a trademark? So if I put a TM in front of a sentence or a word, it doesn't necessarily mean I have got trademark for it? Then everybody can claim a trademark on anything he wants and that would cause problems. What's the benefits of having it for a domain name anyways? If I dont have trademark and somebody goes and takes advantage of my domain name (example "aksflc") to promote something of his own, I need to have a trademark to stop him from doing that?
4- Do I really need trademark in order to stop somebody from making a logo similar to mine?
Regards, Bijan Shahrokhi