Obtaining admin control of an ‘unofficial’ wordpress.com site
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Hello all,
A bit of an odd question, perhaps, but a friend (in Germany) is the author of a series of do-it-yourself magazines that spans a few decades, for which he also holds a registered trademark, but because his focus is more handwork / low-tech than computers, he never actually got around to setting up a website.
For this reason, a friend set up a free wordpress.com hosted site (in the name of the magazine) some 10 years ago, but they are no longer reachable, several years after moving to another country, and we’re wanting to figure out if it’d actually be possible to obtain admin rights to this website.
The closest thing I could find is https://wordpress.com/support/account-recovery/#if-ownership-cannot-be-established which suggests the answer is no, but we were wondering if proof-of-trademark-ownership could provide some kind of exception to this rule (as, again, the website’s hostname / the part of the URL before wordpress.com matches the name of the magazine series and trademark).
Many thanks in advance,
Peter
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Sorry, also meant to say that, as per the website’s own (sidebar) description, it is “[an] (un)official homepage for direct support of the author of the magazine series <insert name here>”, so it also clearly states what it’s about, and who the ‘official owner’ would be, too…
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Hello there,
Many thanks for reaching out.
Are you able to confirm the URL of the website that you need assistance with please?
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Hi Adam,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, and sure, I can, but it is possible to do so via a private message? (Since your profile has a ‘Staff’ badge, I presume you have access to more functionality than I do…)
Many thanks again!
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(And/or to speed things up, here’s a link to a temporary file with the website’s URL in it — I’ll keep it up until you’ve confirmed that you’ve saved the sitename: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1An5toiRyWgjxrMr_mWGiYc8klH_Q425oI3j2ogD6emY. Many thanks again!)
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Accepted answer
So, the short version is that it won’t be possible to regain control of that site without the help of the current site owner. I’ve sent them an email in the hopes that they might reply and assist.
Aside from that, it is possible to request that a site violating a trademark be closed. You would file a complaint here:
https://automattic.com/trademark-policy/
But again, that would not result in you gaining control of that site.
Let’s see if the current site owner replies to the email. Perhaps there will be an easy solution.
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Hi there, thanks to you both for your quick responses, and for reaching out to the current site owner. And :nods:, okay, let’s see what happens, and hopefully you / we will hear back from them, too. Many thanks again!
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