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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

#211

Post by hinkley »

dragonwriter wrote: post #140
hinkley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a trademark any time you want. How would brand recognition work if people couldn't talk about Mustangs and Corvettes? What you can't do is claim it's yours. Or let people think it's yours.

> You can use a trademark any time you want. No, you can't. If you could use it whenever yoh want, we wouldnt have the concept of “nominative fair use” as the exceptional case of when and how you are allowed to use someone else’s mark in commerce without permission.

Mmm. “Anything” is maybe hyperbole.

You can’t represent yourself or product as a brand. But you can write a scathing review about them and use their name and nobody can stop you. That wouldn’t be a trademark situation, it would be defamation, not infringement.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#212

Post by skeaker »

superultra wrote: post #128
skeaker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is often brought up and almost never true. No reasonable court would dump their trademark over this. It needs to be overwhelmingly out of their hands and in the public conscious. "Frisbee" for example still holds their trademark over the word Frisbee despite the fact that the vast majority of people don't even realize that it's a trademarked term. Businesses have de facto no obligation to defend their trademark…

I am not a trademark lawyer. I'm guessing you aren't either or you would have said so. But multiple lawyers on multiple projects with multiple brands have mentioned this to me, and we have sent C&Ds to protect trademarks. With at least two of those lawyers, sure, it might just be more billable hours. But two were pretty decent guys and wouldn't have done it if they didn't think it was necessary. At least within my co…

Exactly my point: Frisbee is subject to genericide but keeps its trademark status because courts almost never actually take trademarks from businesses. If they don't do it to Frisbee then they won't do it to Waffle House because the courts, as you say, rely on precedent.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#213

Post by filoeleven »

closewith wrote: post #201
AStonesThrow wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your website seems to be an aggregator of surface-level news blurbs from the mainstream media and some interviews with individual physicians. There are claims about "made-up" names and "correct scientific names". Putting health claims aside, there are no citations to any legislation that may have prevented a manufacturer from writing these names on a label. This website has a UK perspective, but I was trying to recal…

> Always receiving legal assent to sell fruit juice [nuts are fruits] with a mammalian name. If you mean things like oat milk, it's unlawful in the EU (and I think still the UK) to label plant-based alternatives as milk or dairy under EU Regulation 1308/2013.

Which is absurd, since

> In English, the word "milk" has been used to refer to "milk-like plant juices" since 1200 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk

It's like complaining that modern electric irons can't be called irons because the heat plate doesn't have iron in it.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#214

Post by closewith »

filoeleven wrote: post #213
closewith wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always receiving legal assent to sell fruit juice [nuts are fruits] with a mammalian name. If you mean things like oat milk, it's unlawful in the EU (and I think still the UK) to label plant-based alternatives as milk or dairy under EU Regulation 1308/2013.

Which is absurd, since > In English, the word "milk" has been used to refer to "milk-like plant juices" since 1200 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk It's like complaining that modern electric irons can't be called irons because the heat plate doesn't have iron in it.

That is referring to coconut milk, which is exempted.

The other uses like oat milk come from 1980's ads. It's so recent that the JM Smucker Company tried to trademark it.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#216

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#217

Post by gorkish »

cycomanic wrote: post #139
gorkish wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this whole situation seems to be a pretty good example of what not to do if faced with a copyright claim. It's tempting to see outfits like The Onion or Cards Against Humanity doing this kind of thing and feel like you are bulletproof and can do it too. But it's pretty easy to tell when these 'open letter' responses have not received legal review. Waffle House had a legitimate claim and acted on their obligatio…

What exactly is the trademark violation that they are "obliged" to defend? Somebody putting location and opening times of their restaurants on a map?

In this case it was their logo mark. AFAIK that's the only claim that they actually made as well. Reading anything else into this story is ridiculous.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#218

Post by devilbunny »

devilbunny wrote: post #183
tpmoney wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take much for that to become "TIL Waffle House's owners are so greedy they force their employees to work even during a natural disaster when other businesses are closed". No it's pretty obvious why Waffle House would want to stay far away from this sort of publicity and have very tight control on anything said about it, especially if that publicity looks like it comes from them or is in any way endorsed by…

Except for the long list of stories that have detailed how they actually do this - they have special disaster teams that fly or drive in for the purpose. And where do all the power and other utility linemen eat between their triple-pay shifts in a disaster area? At Waffle House, because it’s always open.

Too late to edit, but: after a disaster, you can go to my nearest WH and watch truck after truck roll by full of utility employees staying at the hotels near it.
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