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

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

#121

Post by mistrial9 »

otterley wrote: post #66
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".

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."

two out of three common auto mechanics were caught here giving false estimates and cheating to some extent on common operations.. how many people can discern minor errors with law?

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

#122

Post by moksly »

laurent123456 wrote: post #77
otterley wrote: post #21

Every answer in this thread is wrong except for "hire an attorney and work with them to figure out what the best option for you is." Do not follow any "free legal advice" from HN -- and I'm speaking as an actual licensed attorney.

I don't know what's so special about law that it can never been discussed in any forum. You can certainly ask about other people's previous experience, possible advice or recommendations. For example for certain legal issues there are government websites that can help, etc. Saying "hire an attorney", as if it was no big deal to directly spend thousands without first asking around, is a bit strange.

The advice sort of extends to any profession doesn’t it? Sometimes you can get good advice from strangers on social media, most times you probably shouldn’t risk anything on it though.

It’s sort of like Google programming isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll get it to work, but you hopefully wouldn’t do it if you were building medical software that could end up killing people. That’s when you pay the experts.

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

#123

Post by Ancapistani »

dtech wrote: post #84
ransom1538 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not respond to the letter. Do not engage. Do not alter your website. Do not hire a lawyer. The fastest way to enter into a legal battle is to hire an attorney and start engaging.

Seems like an excellent way to lose your domain in a default judgement

A default judgement requires that a case be filed. In the US, that means they have to serve you notice of the case.

Obviously they have the OP's address, so if they fail to serve him the judgement should be easy enough to set aside.

I'd do absolutely nothing in this circumstance until and unless they actually initiate a legal proceeding. If they did sue for the domain, depending on the value of brand I probably lawyer up, and perhaps seriously consider counter-suing them for both their domain and the use of the business name itself.

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

#124

Post by dt3ft »

otterley wrote: post #21

Every answer in this thread is wrong except for "hire an attorney and work with them to figure out what the best option for you is." Do not follow any "free legal advice" from HN -- and I'm speaking as an actual licensed attorney.

Of course an attorney would tell you to hire an attorney.

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

#125

Post by y4mi »

prepend wrote: post #42
otterley wrote: post #21

Every answer in this thread is wrong except for "hire an attorney and work with them to figure out what the best option for you is." Do not follow any "free legal advice" from HN -- and I'm speaking as an actual licensed attorney.

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…

> Anecdotally, I’ve never fucked anything up royally.

You're not necessarily wrong, but that's definitely a survivalship bias. You only need to lose once for a game over, so everyone still playing underestimates the stakes at play, as there is close to no interaction to people that have lost.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

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

#126

Post by bhartzer »

bshep wrote: post #107

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?

Personal names generally cannot be trademarked. You would most likely need to have a business or other use case of your last name in order to be granted a trademark.

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

#127

Post by sumoboy »

firekvz wrote: post #43

You were 1st, you are all good UDPR is your friend

UDPR is definitely your friend. Your domain info should have been private anyways, too late now. One question is what content do you have on the domain today and does it relate/similar to the .net domain? If your .com is being used for something beyond a parking page, the .net don't really have a chance so let them file a UDPR.

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

#128

Post by otterley »

zrobotics wrote: post #120
reaperducer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. C&D letters are sent via email all the time. Millions of Americans don't have e-mail. They're just on social media. What then? That's why important things are always sent by mail. Very important things by certified mail.

They may not check their email, but how is anyone on social media without email? I'm not aware of a single social site that doesn't require an email address to create an account.

I believe all of them allow the use of a mobile phone number as an alternative.

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

#129

Post by spockz »

prepend wrote: post #42
otterley wrote: post #21

Every answer in this thread is wrong except for "hire an attorney and work with them to figure out what the best option for you is." Do not follow any "free legal advice" from HN -- and I'm speaking as an actual licensed attorney.

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…

Usually you have something like insurance for this. In Dutch it is called “rechtsbijstand” for private persons and pretty affordable. These are not necessarily the best lawyers obviously but they are backed by huge law firms. Probably the same exists for businesses but way more expensive.

So it doesn’t need to be expensive to request the support of a lawyer.

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