181–190 of 293 posts
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Have you asked them to sell? Usually the price is not even that bad - especially in comparison to any legal fees this endeavor might cost you.
They wanted like $80,000. My company makes that in annual revenue, so it's a nonstarter.
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They're already harassing you under the guise of a legal process. A clock punching attorney won't be emotionally invested in the details of a matter, but the victims of such nastygrams are - the main goal of such letters is to make you stressed and worried so you just cave - hence the corollary of hiring a professional who will handle it impersonally Two wrongs don't make a right, and it certainly may be imprudent to…
A lot of words to justify that you know you’ll likely be impacting someone who did nothing against you.
You need to speak with a qualified domain name attorney, not just any attorney or solicitor. As Director of a domain name protection company (and not an attorney) I can offer this: If you registered the domain name before the other party files for a trademark, then there is no way you would have known that they would file for the mark. So, in most cases you probably don’t have to give up the domain name. It comes dow…
This isn't ok and making them go away isn't good enough. They need to pay for having made that long list of demands and threats, ideally by having their whole business taken away and given to OP.
On a semi-related note, I registered a trademark for my company and the .com is just domain squatting. The .com preexists my trademark however. Do I have any grounds to try and claim it or am I SOL. I know if they were actually using it for a business, it'd be one thing, but it's a generic domain-for-sale page instead.
"What is domain squatting? This is the practicing of buying a domain name for the sole purpose of preventing someone else from buying it. Typically, the buyer will then resell the domain name at a higher price to a buyer who is desperate to pay for the domain. The domain squatter takes a risk in trying to find a domain that someone else will be willing to pay at an up-charge to buy the domain in the future."
If the .com "preexists your trademark", it's harder to prove they bought it to prevent you from buying it. If you're a small business smaller than $80K per year in revenue, it's likely they don't even know you exist.
You need to speak with a qualified domain name attorney, not just any attorney or solicitor. As Director of a domain name protection company (and not an attorney) I can offer this: If you registered the domain name before the other party files for a trademark, then there is no way you would have known that they would file for the mark. So, in most cases you probably don’t have to give up the domain name. It comes dow…
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> as I was using the name 7+ years before them with a similar product
Sounds like they are, but that the issue is in the reverse, they are trying to steal the authors market and product directly by using their name. This is very aggressive, not to mention wrong.
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Also IANAL but these demands make even less sense due to trademarks being categorised in classes , that you own Douche® registered in rubber products doesn't mean someone else can't have Douche® furnitures, and both have a reasonable and compatible claim to the name (for instance there are at least 5 different companies or organisations called "Apple" with presence in the US). Furthermore, the USPTO allows multiple t…
> for instance there are at least 5 different companies or organisations called "Apple" with presence in the US An interesting trivia is that Apple Computer got in trouble with Apple, the record label, when they introduced the Apple IIgs, because it had a musical instrument synthesiser chip built in.
1. A bit of Google-searching suggests that you're in Australia. I couldn't find any U.S. trademark registration for $NAME, where your .com domain is $NAME.com as listed on (what I surmise is) your Twitter header.
2. If the facts are only as you say — always a big "if" — the letter you describe would be ... let's just say, groundless, at least in the U.S.
3. If you own $NAME.com; AND: For seven-plus years you've actually been using $NAME as a trademark "in commerce" in the U.S. by shipping goods bearing the mark (or rendering services under the mark) in interstate- or foreign commerce; AND: You're being threatened with a U.S. trademark registration, AND: The registration hasn't been made "incontestable" by the passage of five unopposed years; THEN: In theory you could petition the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel the other company's registration, on grounds that you're the senior user. That would not be cheap, and I think this would require hiring a lawyer to represent you in the USPTO. https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/ttab/initiating-new-proceed...
4. You might find amusing the precedents at https://www.oncontracts.com/monster-cables-picked-the-wrong-... (response to a threatening letter from Monster Cable) and https://lettersofnote.com/2011/02/14/regarding-your-stupid-c... ("some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters"). In a similar vein, one of my late former law partners reputedly had a big BULLSHIT rubber stamp that he would supposedly apply to such letters and return them to the sender. (I don't remember ever seeing the stamp so it might have been a story that "evolved" over time.)
5. The title/headings that you list are mostly gorilla dust that unsophisticated lawyers throw up to try to get opposing parties to agree. There's no way you'd want to agree to all, or even most, of that without a BIG, buyout-type payday in return.
Again, don't rely on the above as legal advice; when in doubt, consult a lawyer who's licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.
EDIT: If you want, email me (see my HN profile); if this is a U.S. matter and it's not from one of my existing clients (extremely unlikely), maybe I can write and send an "appropriate" email response for a purely-nominal fee (but I wouldn't be able to take on anything more than that).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also IANAL but these demands make even less sense due to trademarks being categorised in classes , that you own Douche® registered in rubber products doesn't mean someone else can't have Douche® furnitures, and both have a reasonable and compatible claim to the name (for instance there are at least 5 different companies or organisations called "Apple" with presence in the US). Furthermore, the USPTO allows multiple t…
> for instance there are at least 5 different companies or organisations called "Apple" with presence in the US An interesting trivia is that Apple Computer got in trouble with Apple, the record label, when they introduced the Apple IIgs, because it had a musical instrument synthesiser chip built in.
https://nissan.com/ Seems relevant here :)