Replace logo with a picture of a waffle and name it the Waffle Index?
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Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
141–150 of 218 posts
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#142[flagged]
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark. Actually, I'm pretty sure their request has no trademark law legs to stand on. Trademark infringement first and foremost requires two things: a) commercial use and b) for the goods and services the trademark is registered for. Now I just checked and Waffle House…
I think you're missing some nuance in your understanding of trademarks with all due respect. The core use of trademark protection isn't a commercial use, necessarily. Rather, it's the act of infringing on the trademark holder's commercial use. So, if Waffle House is selling Waffle House t-shirts, and a business next door is giving away free Waffle House t-shirts that they printed - then yes, Waffle House would very l…
To make it clear: The trademark is the combination of the sign (e.g. the word or logo) and the goods and services it is registered for. If you use the same sign for different goods and services then there is no infringement and no watering down/dilution, thus nothing to defend against.
There is a difference when treating well-known trademarks (say Coca-Cola, Sony, Google), however I doubt Waffle House gets over the threshold set for that for being too local (I counted at least 20 states that do not have one) and not sufficiently known by all demographics (if you want to know more read up on the Lanham Act).
Full disclosure: I am a TM lawyer, but not in the US. YMMV and what I write here is no legal advice ;-) since only gathered from US colleagues' explanations regarding cases clients had in the US.
The notorious/well-know concept is part of an international treaty (Art. 6bis of the Paris Convention) and its interpretation is similar in most western countries, so I'd expect the US interpretation to not be that far off.
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark. Actually, I'm pretty sure their request has no trademark law legs to stand on. Trademark infringement first and foremost requires two things: a) commercial use and b) for the goods and services the trademark is registered for. Now I just checked and Waffle House…
You don't trademark for your advertising, commercials, menus, signs, or your website. You trademark for contents.
Sorry, I do not understand what you mean to say. Could you elaborate?
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#145I'm surprised at some of the comments here that don't see Waffle House's side of this. You're a company, and some third party makes a website that very much looks like it could be official, using your name and logo in part, and this website is purporting to know the open/close status of your stores. Literally an indicator if people should bother going out to spend money at your business or not. An actual signal to ec…
I think we all see Waffle House's side of this, but there is a best, better, and worst way to engage a customer. A cease and desist is the worst, it's taking something which could have been handled by PR, to a legal threat. Regardless of Waffle House's legal rights, which they do have, from a public perception and way to run a company it was not the right approach. They should have embraced this guy and his website,…
The C&D isn't for the customers, it's for Waffle House. Apprising a party of their infringement and putting them on notice is a crucial procedural step for potential litigation.
>They should have embraced this guy and his website, engage him, and through that channel let him know "hey, you can't use our trademarks, etc. so you'll need to rebrand, but we love what you're doing and want to help."
I don't mean this cynically or rhetorically, but: why? I get that this is a fun and humorous side project for the creator, but I don't see any real upside for Waffle House in supporting it. If Waffle House wanted to lean into the proxy-for-FEMA marketing angle, it'd be much better off doing it in-house, where it'd have complete creative control. More likely, Waffle House marketing strategists crunched the numbers and are understandably hesitant to expand branding based on national disasters and the woeful state of government response infrastructure.
We do this every year when Nintendo sends an icy C&D to some quirky project built on its IP. Techies rend their garments about the deplorable state of IP law, and forecast imminent fallout from all the "bad PR" and "missed opportunities," as if there's a vast, highly sensitive market segment of temporarily aggrieved nerds that has somehow gone unaccounted for in its sprawling global marketing strategy. "I'll never buy a Nintendo product again!" says the 42-year-old Senior Software Engineer with 312 unplayed games in his Steam library, and the money-printing machine continues to hum unabated.
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#146Great read! Keep on being you! I am confused about FEMA: are they using some automated process or is it an abandoned index?
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mere threat of legal action for most Americans means $$$. As a college student, probably broke as well. This person probably does not have the legal understanding or access to lawyers to guide him through it. Much easier to take it down rather than deal with potential legal ramifications. A half decent lawyer or even the "free" lawyer services at most universities probably would have advised just removing the "tr…
You ignore the cease and desist, they take you to court (still unlikely because they also incur cost they dont want). You don't need a lawyer to go to a courtroom, they will order you to take it down and then you do. They're very unlikely to sue for damages because the cost of their lawyers far exceed whatever 'damages' are in place here, which I would assume are close to zero. Please don't fold immediately to this t…
IAAL (but not a practicing one, so I don't have skin in this game, and this is not legal advice). I also once lost $25k+ in a copyright litigation relating to music piracy before I became a lawyer. It was decidedly not fun.
You ignore a C&D at your peril. The rules are complicated and the fines and penalties for not following the rules are expensive. U.S. IP law is fiercely protective of patent rights, trademark rights, and copyright. It's not something you mess around with, and anyone who tries to defend himself without a lawyer is a god damned fool. The author of the blog post did the right thing by engaging and trying to work something out without coming across like "go pound sand, I do what I want."
Please don't walk around giving bad advice like this. I pray for the poor sap who listens to it.
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#148Great read! Keep on being you! I am confused about FEMA: are they using some automated process or is it an abandoned index?
It's never been an official index.
This is conjecture but I'm pretty sure the idea of it even being an "index" is a stretch. More like people who work in disaster relief talking about their jobs informally. "I just got back from Town A. They had a tornado but it wasn't too bad. The Waffle House stayed open." "I'm heading to Town B. They've been having flooding so bad the Waffle House has been closed for 12 hours." That sort of thing.
Edit: Apparently FEMA contacts local businesses including Waffle Houses in the areas affected by a disaster to ask how they are doing. This makes sense as an added source of data to gauge the severity of an emergency. Still a stretch to call it the "Waffle House Index".
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're missing some nuance in your understanding of trademarks with all due respect. The core use of trademark protection isn't a commercial use, necessarily. Rather, it's the act of infringing on the trademark holder's commercial use. So, if Waffle House is selling Waffle House t-shirts, and a business next door is giving away free Waffle House t-shirts that they printed - then yes, Waffle House would very l…
To make it clear: The trademark is the combination of the sign (e.g. the word or logo) and the goods and services it is registered for. If you use the same sign for different goods and services then there is no infringement and no watering down/dilution, thus nothing to defend against. There is a difference when treating well-known trademarks (say Coca-Cola, Sony, Google), however I doubt Waffle House gets over the t…
Thanks for explaining and lending your expertise.
Though, I am, again not a lawyer, but I am 99% sure you can't go use the Waffle House logo to sell anything, let alone waffles. I only say that because no one is using, say, the Coca-Cola brand to sell shoes, and if they did, we all know Coca-Cola would prevent that. That goes for any trademark in the US. So perhaps trademark law is different here?
Also, Waffle House are ubiquitous as a brand in the United States - certainly not as well known as Coca-Cola or Sony, but I have no doubt they'd be able to prove national awareness in any demographic.
In this particular case if you look at the C&D, it is for the trademark usage. It's likely that this person could have simply removed the trademark from the page and it would have been fine.
edit: I think the key in other industries would be proof of brand dilution - that is, if you start using the Nike logo to sell waffles, Nike would send a C&D if not a team of lawyers because you are diluting the trademark. So I guess you're technically right, although functionally, brand dilution is easily provable.
Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
#150[flagged]
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