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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

#161

Post by AStonesThrow »

pikminguy wrote: post #148
Bengalilol wrote: post #126

Great 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." Th…

> Records show the index started out as a joke - and that some employees would prefer it stay that way

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/sep/01/waffle-ho...

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#164

Post by dmoy »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #159
jrochkind1 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They send specific jump teams in there. More details:

https://www.govtech.com/em/disaster/hurricane-preparation-an...

Waffle House is like weirdly serious about disaster preparedness, for a restaurant chain.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#165

Post by quantified »

HWR_14 wrote: post #130
jeron wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a bummer - scraping is one thing but this was free marketing for them. If only they put their marketing department in front of their legal department (assuming they have a marketing department)

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.

What about the Big Mac index that the Economist uses to measure purchase price parity across countries?

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#166

Post by Xorakios »

otterley wrote: post #147
JohnMakin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 righ…

Thank you and I have been the poor sap in the past, and never, ever again

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#167

Post by PenguinCoder »

jeron wrote: post #77
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 :)

this is a bummer - scraping is one thing but this was free marketing for them. If only they put their marketing department in front of their legal department (assuming they have a marketing department)

Absolutely not. Legal takes precedent over marketing or should.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#169

Post by slippy »

Now if your site was named wafflehurricanetracker.org it would have probably survived trademark issues. The scraping issues would have been better if they were anonymized - it wouldn't necessarily be obvious that it was Waffle House (TM) that you had scraped, but if you suggested it was made by slow scraping websites of one or more popular breakfast establishments, then it wouldn't have been obvious.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#170

Post by sdenton4 »

jjmarr wrote: post #121
sdenton4 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe scraping is generally ok - there's actual trademark law about trademarks, which is why you got a c+d about trademark usage, instead of a general 'stop what you're doing we don't like it' c+d. A good point of comparison is steam db (and other similar sites), which uses Steam public info to triangulate market info that isn't immediately apparent. https://steamdb.info/

The first sentence on SteamDB is: > This third-party website gives you better insight into the Steam platform and everything in its database. It clearly states that it's not affiliated with Steam and is a separate organization. There's also a further disclaimer in the footer of the page. In contrast, the "Waffle House Index" had the Waffle House logo at the top of the page, with zero explanation or elaboration on who…

Yeah, exactly - fix the trademark problem by not using the logo and starting clearly who you are, and then go to town...
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