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Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

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Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#151

Post by mcphage »

rtkwe wrote: post #44
mcphage wrote: post #35

On one hand, yes, the author was using Waffle House's own data to populate the site. But on the other, Waffle House has no way of guaranteeing that remains the case, and they don't want their private APIs to be depended upon by a 3rd party site seen by thousands of people. So I guess I'm not surprised by their reaction. Still: it would be fun if it actually was a thing.

It's a trademark thing, brands are really protective of them because the rules around dilution are a bit murky so they err on the side of trying to stamp out any unauthorized use just to make it clear it's in use and protected so there's little chance of losing it because a court takes a different view of a time they let it slide.

Right, and I don't really have anything interesting to say in that direction. I was more discussing that Waffle House claimed "This information is incorrect. We currently do not have a live website tracking restaurant closures", and the author's response "But I was quite literally USING their data for this, so it wasn’t really incorrect at all."

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#152

Post by rostigerpudel »

superultra wrote: post #149
rostigerpudel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No prob. Just some random bits I found looking around for clues whether there already were any decisions from US courts wrt whether Waffle House is a well-known trademark:

Interestingly enough, Waffle House is mentioned in a 2007 article related to a US trademark law reform as an edge case [1].

This does not seem to be the first time that Waffle House appears to be overreaching: [2]. The balls to pull this off with a straight face, kudos to the colleagues.

An article from INTA relating to dilution [3].

[1] https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864... page 458, last paragraph and footnote [2] https://www.techdirt.com/2011/08/17/waffle-house-says-rap-so... [3] https://www.inta.org/fact-sheets/trademark-dilution-intended...

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#153

Post by edm0nd »

xyst wrote: post #34
lafond wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here! After receiving the C&D, the method with which I was getting the data was removed/patched (which I'm now noticing was not mentioned in the blog post...) I did ask them if there was any thing I could to keep it up and never received a response, and rather than playing a cat & mouse game of "now you don't have our branding, but you are scraping are data so here's another C&D" I just took it down :)

Probably because of you, the legal dogs hired by Waffle House probably updated their ToS to include "unauthorized scraping"

its still okay to break websites ToS and AUP though.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#154

Post by dylan604 »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #88
dylan604 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all of the examples of people protecting their brand, you should know better. Of course this is what they are going to do. Every. Single. Time. The least dickish example is probably the Jack Daniels incident, but even their first contact to the offender was a C&D.

After all the examples of brands handling things badly, you should know better. From Bud Light to Peloton, corporate-customer relations is not a new topic. There are different ways to handle this. Waffle House chose a path which now has however many people on Hckrnews making up their minds in both positive, and negative ways. That's not what a company wants. The least dickish thing to do is to not be a dick.

No, the least dickish thing to do would be to not infringe upon what is clearly someone's trademark. If you think you can use something someone else created as their identity without permission, then you're just a dick.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#155

Post by shmeeed »

dragonwriter wrote: post #72
drob518 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but… lawyers cost money and you need to decide if the gain is worth the cost.

Disregarding a demand letter can cost far more money than a consultation with an attorney, and you need to decide if the gain from that choice is worth the cost, hence the need for a consultation. (Though its less likely, complying with such a letter can also have hidden costs, so a consultation may be a good idea even if that is your inclination, but you are usually far more likely to experience adverse consequences…

Out of curiosity, what could be the hidden cost of complying?

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#157

Post by itishappy »

jjmarr wrote: post #133
itishappy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No guarantee that such marketing will be good, however.

"Waffle House is so reliably open that FEMA uses it to measure hurricane devastation" is a great piece of marketing. If you're tired, hung over, or really hungry, you can always stumble into a Waffle House at any time and get something to eat. If you can't, there are bigger problems in your life (hurricane, zombies, tornadoes).

In situations like this I always think to myself "what would Reddit say?" Then I get a bit depressed.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#158

Post by frereubu »

I put up a (much less interesting and more nerdily annoyed) site that described how Dannon / Danone was using made-up sciency names for the bacteria in their yoghurt, and their legal department got in touch. I didn't back down: https://whatisbifidusregularis.org/legal-action-against-this... I think this example would have been fine if the Waffle House branding had been removed. Then just put a big disclaimer at the top, which also makes clear the silliness of the kinds of legal claims made by these companies.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#159

Post by drjasonharrison »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #92
iambateman wrote: post #39

There's a world where Waffle House acquires this from him for like $50k and it's an endearing story of corporate humanity. But if I'm running the WH brand, I simply don't want to be the semi-official corporate sponsor of every major natural disaster.

Probably true, even though the point of it is a testament to how robust and reliable WH's are, they don't close if they have any way at all to stay open, is the original point of it. It's quite positive toward WH.

Does the company take care of it's employees? Are employees expected to travel to/from the workplace during horrible weather? If the conditions worsen is the company responsible for the employee's safety? What about customers?

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#160

Post by throwawaymaths »

mindcrime wrote: post #134
HWR_14 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame the legal department. They are legally required to send a C&D in situations like that or they can lose their trademarks.

That's an oversimplification. WH could also reach out and offer to work out a deal with the site owner to license use of their trademark. That would probably entail some compensation (which could be anything from "good will" or a token cash amount, up to millions of dollars) and probably some verbiage on the page reading something along the lines of "Logos and identifiers on this page are the property of Waffle House…

sure but thats also work that someone doesn't have to do. and the "house" was evidentally dealing with a disaster at the time.
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