Working on a side project for AWS, can domain have “AWS” included?

Question

Ask HN: Currently working on a side project for AWS, the product's domain name has the word "aws" included. Will I get any legal issue from Amazon? Is it advisable to have the word "AWS"? Please advise

BjoernKW · Accepted Answer

Their trademark guidelines expressly forbid this ("11. No Combination."): https://aws.amazon.com/trademark-guidelines/This had us rename our eBook about developing and running Spring Boot applications on AWS from the original working title "AWS 101" to "Stratospheric" (https://stratospheric.dev/ ), which in my opinion is a much better name, too.

QuinnyPig · Answer

Technically it runs afoul of their rules. Practically, I started https://www.lastweekinaws.com four and a half years ago, with an alternate "cloud" based domain instead; my thinking was "give me grief, I'll migrate and then start talking about your competition."I can say that they've never had an issue with my use of it to date, despite my extreme levels of sarcasm.

quickthrower2 · Answer

IANAL but I wouldn&rsquo;t risk it. Especially as it&rsquo;s AWS related stuff (rather than your name is Andrew William Smith or something)Why not use cloud in place of AWS in the name?

texteller · Answer

Thanks all for your kind response and advise, so I finally decided to change the domain name without their name.