Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 293 posts

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#101

Post by JohnHaugeland »

Get an attorney and push back.

All they're doing is losing their trademark here. If you were using it before them, it shouldn't have been assigned to them.

GET AN ATTORNEY.

But to calm down, read about "stop and go" in Pittsburgh in the 90s. There was a store called that about an hour's drive outside the city. Then a gas station convenience chain merger tried to take on that name for 150 stores. About two years later the original store found out and said no. The 150 store behemoth tried to sue.

The 150 stores are now called CoGo's.

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#103

Post by devoutsalsa »

nicbou wrote: post #55
prepend wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t question your motives in this instance, but I always pay extra attention when someone’s advice is to hire them or someone like them. Obviously, “hire a lawyer,” is sometimes right. But if I hired a lawyer every time I was told to, I would be out hundreds of hours of billing fees. Anecdotally, I’ve never fucked anything up royally. That doesn’t mean that I made the right decision, but is something I strive for…

In my experience, a lawyer will also nudge you towards whichever course involves keeping a lawyer involved. They'll never tell you "if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't keep going".

A bad lawyer will never help you get to the point, because a bad lawyer needs to milk you as they have little to no referral business.

I got a semi-serious traffic ticket in Colorado in 2014, but I lived in California. I forgot about the ticket, and remembered a couple years later. I wanted to clear up the situation, but navigating the court system from a different state was challenging. I decided hiring an attorney local to the area would be easier than traveling to Colorado.

I called maybe 6 to 8 attorneys, and they fell into three categories: too expensive, too inexperienced, or just right.

Too expensive sounded like “we’ll need a $2000 retainer to even look at your case.”

Too inexperienced sounded like “I just graduated from law school, and I’ll give you a super good rate for the experience of working on your case.”

Just right sounded like “I know the district attorney who is overseeing your case. Their name is $NAME, and here’s exactly how I’m going to handle your case… …I might be able to handle this for $500, but it could cost maybe double that if it’s more work than expected.”

I got the matter resolved for between 1X and 2X the minimum estimate, and was happy with the results.

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#104

Post by otterley »

gitfan86 wrote: post #98
otterley wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't lose a domain based off of a threatening email. Indeed, but if you take no action at all, the opposing counsel does take action, and you don't contest the action, then the default outcome could be a forced transfer of the domain.

So you agree that he doesn't need a lawyer at this junction. But if a lawsuit is filled, he will need to respond and request that the case be dismissed. Using a lawyer for that step isn't a bad idea. They are going to have a hard time finding a case that set a precedent that you can take over another company's website because you registered a similar company 5 years later. Lookup nissan.com

This is not legal advice, but I don't recommend waiting until a suit is filed. Hiring counsel early and figuring out how to respond to the initial notice can be important: it might keep the courts out of the dispute altogether (especially if the other side is on very weak grounds) and might increase the settlement amount (if any) should OP choose to settle and transfer the domain.

There's more to this issue than just the naked law and legal procedure. Context matters, and experienced lawyers help you navigate situations. They're called "counsel" for a reason. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#105

Post by JohnHaugeland »

dragonwriter wrote: post #61

> Is this correct? Is it correct that they will sue you if you don't comply? Maybe, that's up to them. Is it correct that your use of the domain name violates their trademark? Also, maybe. That depends on the market you are in, the market they are in and that the trademark is registered for, and other things. If you aren't willing to just hand over the domain, and don't want to just roll the dice on liability, you sh…

I am not a lawyer.

> Is it correct that your use of the domain name violates their trademark? Also, maybe

No. As an issue of black letter law, if they can demonstrate that they were using it before the issuance, it does not violate trademark, by design.

Many trademarks are lost this way.

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#106

Post by torstenvl »

datavirtue wrote: post #90
otterley wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you had such an experience. Ethical lawyers will give you the best advice they can, which often includes "you are going to end up paying me way more than what's at stake here." (This literally just happened to me as a client over a land-sale-deposit dispute.) Or, "This is a turkey of a case and you should roll over. You owe me nothing."

I have gotten that advice from lawyers. I just kept hitting up new lawyers until I found one that saw things my way. Resulted in a windfall for me.

Glad it worked out for you, but it's a bad idea to extrapolate that to broader advice. Maybe you got lucky. Maybe it wasn't luck and you have some kind of gift for assessing case trajectory. But in either case, most people aren't going to be able to predict a case outcome better than experienced attorneys.

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#107

Post by bshep »

Out of curiosity, I have a similar question in the same vein.

I own MY_LAST_NAME.com, me and my family use it for email, ( i.e. firname@lastnane.com ) should we register a trademark to protect ourselves from this type of bullying? Are we safe since its our own last name?

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

nrook wrote: post #62
nicbou wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, a lawyer will also nudge you towards whichever course involves keeping a lawyer involved. They'll never tell you "if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't keep going".

My experience differs. I once had a legal dispute in which I was asked to sign away some additional rights in order to receive some money that I was owed anyway. My lawyer said, essentially, "you are in the right, but you aren't planning on using those rights anyway, so just sign the paper and get this over with." There are scrupulous and unscrupulous lawyers, much as in any profession.

> My lawyer said, essentially, "you are in the right, but you aren't planning on using those rights anyway, so just sign the paper and get this over with."

There are situations where this is very good legal advice. Collecting things you are owed from people who don't want to give them up takes time and money (and involves risk), and even when it nominally works the systems intended to make you whole for the additional costs don't always, and especially often don't value time (both delay and the consumption of your personal time) as much as you do.

A lawyer's job isn't just to advise you on what the law says you are entitled to, but more critically to do so on the course of action that will best achieve your interests given the pragmatics of the legal system.

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#109

Post by phonebanshee »

ksec wrote: post #53
gumby wrote: post #14

As you said "solicitor" I'm guessing you're not in the USA. If you are in the USA, the law is on your side: just because they registered the mark doesn't take away your rights. In addition, if they are doing something different from you (or perhaps you're using the domain for non-business purposes) they have no claim. You can open McDonald's garden shop (even if your name isn't McDonald) and unless you made it look l…

>As you said "solicitor" I'm guessing you're not in the USA. But then they use Pacific Time Zone.

Which makes it a very good bet that they're Canadian.

Re: Ask HN: Own .com for 7 years, a new company trademarked my name registered .NET

#110

Post by stevenalowe »

Not a lawyer. Talk to one. In your country.

In the USA, if there might be customer confusion between your two businesses then there is grounds for a cease and desist, but you have precedence. Might consider turning the tables and sending them a cease and desist :) perhaps they’d like to give you the .net domain as an apology

Post reply on HN