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[JxFriday]

If I were going to make an instructinal book or video about eBay, and wanted to call it "Making extra money from garage sales to eBay" (or any other title with the word eBay in it), is there any issue with the fact that someone owns a trademark on the word eBay?  I'm not talking about using their stylized logo, just the word eBay.  The book would in fact talk about eBay and other profit making endeavors, would actually promote eBay to some extent, and so on.

[JSonnabend]

As a general rule, the law permits you to use a trademark (in non-stylized form) to refer to the trademarked thing itself.  Your title should therefore be allowed.

- Jeff

[JxFriday]

Thanks Jeff!  I had searched here for relevant articles and after coming upon the concept of "nominative use" had then Googled (oops, used their trademark as a verb - a no no) around a bit and found several articles which seemed to say that such use would be OK.  It's much better to hear it from a professional such as yourself.

Thank you!

In case it helps others, here are some links on the topic:

http://www.publaw.com/fairusetrade.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/trademark/faq.cgi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use