Tom Gores' Palace Sports & Entertainment filed for federal trademark protection for the "Detroit City Soccer Club" name last week, about nine months after registering more than a dozen website domain names linked to the possible moniker of a Major League Soccer team in the city.

The trademark registration came July 6, the same day Crain's first published a story about the domain name registration in September and the existence of a @DetroitCitySC Twitter account established in January. Crain's discovered the registration, which lists intellectual property lawyer Michael Melfi of Bodman PLC's Ann Arbor office as the attorney of record, using an online search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark database.

Gores, the owner of the Detroit Pistons, and Dan Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans Inc. and Rock Ventures LLC, are trying get an MLS expansion team for downtown Detroit. They've proposed a $1 billion stadium and mixed-use development to be constructed on the site of the half-built Wayne County Consolidated Jail on Gratiot Avenue at I-375.

"Basically it was done after the story surfaced last week as protection," Kevin Grigg, spokesman for Palace Sports & Entertainment, said of the trademark registration. "No names have been selected. We are still very early in our bid process with the MLS. This is simply to maintain our optionality for the future."

Last week, Grigg confirmed that Palace Sports had registered the domain names but cautioned that the soccer effort remains early in the process and nothing has been decided on a team name.

The domains were registered Sept. 28 using a Palace email address and all redirect to palacenet.com.

The name registrations don't necessarily mean the MLS team would be called Detroit City Soccer Club. It's a common practice in sports and business to register potential names early at a relatively low cost before someone else — called cybersquatters — buys them with the intent of selling them at an inflated price, which is what happened with the www.littlecaesarsarena.com domain.

Gores and Gilbert, if they get a team, also could choose another name and register different domains and social media accounts. They submitted their MLS expansion bid Jan. 31, and the league expects to award teams to two cities later this year, and another two in 2018.

The existence of the domain names riled some supporters of Detroit City Football Club, the popular semi-professional team that plays at Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck, on Twitter last week.