101–110 of 209 posts
Cease and desist letters are cold emails. It can scary to receive one, but once you unwind what the accusing party has to gain from it, you realize it has as much teeth as a tweet.
They can perhaps be used to establish willful infringement if it ever does go to court.
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Okay, since you failed to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" thing, I'm going to ask: how much would it reasonably cost to hire an attorney for advice on this? Assuming the contacting lawyer is on shaky ground. No "it depends" please, a ballpark. Maybe it's cheaper to have one on retainer. How much per month, if like a normal citizen your only daily legal risks are random megacorporations threatening you? Should eve…
Most smaller firms will require a retainer. $5k is fairly common. I've been able to work with several large firms for work, and several smaller firms for personal stuff. Personally, I much prefer the larger firms. In general their work product, responsiveness, and timeliness is well ahead of small firms. They aren't even that much more expensive for some things. Unfortunately I don't know what the retainer $$ would b…
The premise of this article is that you somehow have to respond to it which is nuts. If the letter is ridiculous (e.g. citing terms of service you did not sign) then you're better off to ignore it and not waste money on legal fees. Also everyone who suggests getting a lawyer has probably not had to hire one in the past. With very few exceptions they will tell you it "depends" and maybe give you a few legal terms you…
If you have not received a C&D before then the reason to consult with an attorney is to evaluate the risk. A lot of legal trouble arises from assuming you understand something when you actually don't. (Ask me how I know.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, since you failed to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" thing, I'm going to ask: how much would it reasonably cost to hire an attorney for advice on this? Assuming the contacting lawyer is on shaky ground. No "it depends" please, a ballpark. Maybe it's cheaper to have one on retainer. How much per month, if like a normal citizen your only daily legal risks are random megacorporations threatening you? Should eve…
> Should everyone in the US have a lawyer on call? I had a coworker at a previous job who often talked about "her family's attorney." I'm like, families have attorneys? I don't think I've talked to a lawyer once in my life.
I gather the version of that I did get was the middle-class version—which some others didn't get and have a similar "wait, that's just normal?" reaction as I do to the upper-middle stuff. Like 90% of that's basically credit-related—how credit cards work and how to use them, how to build credit, how to buy a house (generally with a mortgage, so, still basically a credit-related thing), that kind of stuff.
I've noticed similar things when it comes to paying others to do stuff for me. Having a house cleaner come in for the first time was fucking weird. Still is, really. I can't relax, feel like I ought to be helping. Or paying someone to do work on my house that I could do—tiling, drywalling, some light electrical, plumbing, most general home-improvement stuff. It feels gross—I don't think it does for those who grew up with that stuff being normal. I suspect it's a barrier to advancing in business, because those attitudes carry over. Delegation is weird to me. Being someone's boss is horribly uncomfortable. The notion of starting a business and hiring employees to take over stuff I've been doing feels icky and wrong, and no amount of one part of my brain telling another part to knock it off makes that go away.
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> Should everyone in the US have a lawyer on call? I had a coworker at a previous job who often talked about "her family's attorney." I'm like, families have attorneys? I don't think I've talked to a lawyer once in my life.
A coworker's wife's friend is an attorney. So he's "his family's attorney" now, because of course he is. My landlord is a dentist, so he's my dentist now, because of course he is... That's how it mostly works... I guess :P
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I'm going to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" answer but once you get past that necessary first step I do have a few tips: * get comfortable reading legal documents, this will allow you to have more intelligent conversations with your attorney * don't let your attorney make your business decisions, one of their jobs is to point out risks, one of your jobs (owner/ceo/leadership) is to figure out how to mitigate ris…
Okay, since you failed to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" thing, I'm going to ask: how much would it reasonably cost to hire an attorney for advice on this? Assuming the contacting lawyer is on shaky ground. No "it depends" please, a ballpark. Maybe it's cheaper to have one on retainer. How much per month, if like a normal citizen your only daily legal risks are random megacorporations threatening you? Should eve…
Also, I've been working with him for so long (including on a few nontrivial things like selling companies) that he often doesn't charge me at all for trivial things.
But one thing I don't understand every time there's a C&D story is why leave a paper trail to send the C&D to in the first place if doing something in a gray area? If I was creating some piece of software that is designed to give the middle finger to the man or facebook or whoever and/or benefit the public, I would just release the source anonymously on some random forum and it can't be stopped. Why create an official github repo with your real email and everything just to take credit?
To clarify, I mean cases like youtube vanced or the recent valve/nintendo portal mod issue, where its obvious some company might not like it, but I don't see why the projects couldn't have continued anyway if the authors didn't expose themselves to litigation. Or am I being naive about this?
There are sound reasons why this can't be the case, but it sure would be nice if anti-SLAPP laws[1] were also able to cover these kinds of petty intimidation maneuvers by huge corporations. (It would probably be impossible to weave a statute that prevents this kind of bullying while also enabling legitimate uses of C&D letters. So this is entirely fantasy.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against…
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What's the proper course of action if you don't have an attorney?
My main piece of advice is to get an attorney, preferably one who has experience in your industry. They know more about how this stuff really works than you or I ever will, and you won't be able to judge what risk you're really taking without that knowledge. But, if I were operating "without a net" like that (which I would never do!), and I really felt that the C&D was about something I wasn't doing wrong, I'd be inc…
That's really the key. I used to work for a very small company that happened to have an attorney as one of the owners (there were a lot of cooks in that particular kitchen!). One day he came to me with a letter from a large RAM manufacturer demanding payment for a license on some technology I don't even remember. His only question was "do we use anything they make as far as you know?"
"Nope."
"OK. It's just a fishing expedition." Balls up the letter, throws in the trash and walks away.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the proper course of action if you don't have an attorney?
I'm going to avoid the snarky "hire an attorney" answer but once you get past that necessary first step I do have a few tips: * get comfortable reading legal documents, this will allow you to have more intelligent conversations with your attorney * don't let your attorney make your business decisions, one of their jobs is to point out risks, one of your jobs (owner/ceo/leadership) is to figure out how to mitigate ris…
For any functioning system, ultimately a business owner will need to decide (formally and explicitly, or informally and implicitly) what risk they're willing to accept to proceed.
What you're saying I think is that you should be informed enough to have an intelligent conversation with your attorney, and be able to make decisions on what risk they point out you're willing to take, and/or how you can mitigate it without just avoiding/shutting down?