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A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

abovethelaw.com

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Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#91
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's nice about that one is it appears to fulfill their obligation to show that they are policing unauthorized uses of their trademark without causing any real harm to anyone else.

Offering a contribution to reprinting is an especially nice touch.

They could have added another carrot: a donation to charity! IIRC, they didn't need to, the author agreed.

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#92

Worked ok in Safari browser. One wonders why more lawyers aren't humorous. Is it because it causes their clients harm? Or because they are afraid they can't generate fees if they don't look professional? Here is another great example, between the Cleveland Browns and a fan. I cite Snopes, otherwise I wouldn't believe it to be true. http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/browns.asp

It's because lawyers are often (to make a broad generalization), terribly risk-averse. Judges can sometimes disapprove of not giving the law it's "proper respect" (see Chad Johnson's recent stint in jail after being let off). Also, oftentimes lawyers can just drop the relevant facts at hand into a template. I'd bet the lawyer sending the C&D has sent a huge number of other C&D's worded pretty much identically.

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#94

This reminds me about how important it is to have a solid lawyer, and an understanding of the legal ecosystem. Even in cases like this with typos, "respond in ten (10) days" can be quite intimidating, especially when there's a money/legal power asymmetry. In one such case, Monster Cable issued a C&D to a much smaller, Blue Jeans Cable. The founder actually worked in litigation for 19 years and I found this portion of…

Not to detract from that excellent, excellent response but refusing to pay he has every reason to overstate his eagerness for litigation in hopes of scaring Monster Cable off. Of course, in making that statement publicly he also nailed his colors to the mast, making it far more difficult to back down even if he might have otherwise. And now that he's made that public and gotten press coverage other companies know not…

He didn't hear from monster cable again, so it seems to have worked.

Choosing a stupidly generic word for a trademark seems to mean spending a lot of money on lawyers to protect that mark, especially if you're aggressive as Monster is about it.

(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123869022704882969.html#arti...) alternate location (http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/HallOfShame/MonsterCable...) (The rest of that website is rather unpleasant).

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#95
post #67
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also unreadable where i work where scribd is basically useless. Would be nice if people linked to pdfs instead of scribd.

When someone submits a PDF to HN it'll be automatically changed to a scribd link, so that's why you see so many scribd links to HN. I know that doesn't help with this particular article.

Why? Was Scribd an Ycombinator company? Is pg the devil?

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#96
post #67
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also unreadable where i work where scribd is basically useless. Would be nice if people linked to pdfs instead of scribd.

When someone submits a PDF to HN it'll be automatically changed to a scribd link, so that's why you see so many scribd links to HN. I know that doesn't help with this particular article.

I think a scribd link gets added to the end rather than substituted for the entire link?

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#97
post #60

There was a confusing bit in the "P.S." section in this letter which read like some kind of veiled threat to expose the city for tax fraud, or for some kind of tax-related misdeeds. What was that all about? Is it generally a good idea to put veiled threats in responses to cease-and-desist letters?

The joke is that he is demanding a refund of his property taxes without any evidence or argument just as the township lawyer was also issuing merit-less demands.

Ah. Whoosh. Yep. Thanks.

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#99
post #98

I'm a fan of Lowtax's response to Ubisoft's cease and desist: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=268...

Your link appears to be behind a paywall (must pay for archives access), but I think this is it? http://www.dmlp.org/threats/ubisoft-v-kyanka

Re: A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter

#100
post #95
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone submits a PDF to HN it'll be automatically changed to a scribd link, so that's why you see so many scribd links to HN. I know that doesn't help with this particular article.

Why? Was Scribd an Ycombinator company? Is pg the devil?

Yes, and no; because once upon a time (when the decision was made) it was really painful to hit a PDF, because you'd wake the memory-hogging, task-bar infesting beast that Firefox wanted to open PDFs with.
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