Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House • Hacker News Board

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#51

Post by DrillShopper » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #41

xyst wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

> You don't need a lawyer to go to a courtroom

You don't need one, but it is incredibly ill-advised and reckless to go into a case like this without a lawyer.

> They're very unlikely to sue for damages

Lawyer's fees are very often moved for in IP infringement cases, so even if they don't sue for damages, you're going to end up paying their lawyers.

> Please don't fold immediately to this tired legal tactic.

If you feel so confident about this, why not put up a replacement site and try this strategy when you get the inevitable C&D? Keep us informed. I'm interested to see how that plays out.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#52

Post by no_wizard » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #40

Cease and desists are the equivalent of asking firmly but nicely in the legal world. They don't hold any legal bearing or obligate you to any sort of response. They are usually hoping you get intimidated into doing what they ask. You can always call their bluff and say 'no,' although I see in comments the OP neglected to mention they also patched/fixed the technique used to get this data so it probably was more of th…

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

However, you should always speak to a lawyer if you get any kind of legal notice, but especially of this type. Never assume, thats how things can go sideways, even if you may initially have had standing to dispute the notice.

Always talk to a lawyer before taking any action in situations like this.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#53

Post by jdonaldson » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

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.

They probably already make a ton of money selling this information to hedge funds.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#54

Post by dmurray » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #45

JohnMakin wrote: post #40

Cease and desists are the equivalent of asking firmly but nicely in the legal world. They don't hold any legal bearing or obligate you to any sort of response. They are usually hoping you get intimidated into doing what they ask. You can always call their bluff and say 'no,' although I see in comments the OP neglected to mention they also patched/fixed the technique used to get this data so it probably was more of th…

True. But he was using a variation of the Waffle House logo that their lawyers would argue would "confuse the average consumer", and he was using the "Waffle House" name in a domain. In something that was actually directly related to the real Waffle House. Unfortunately, their lawyers would have an easy time with that lawsuit. If op had named it something different, and didn't use such a closely inspired logo, he pro…

> But he was using a variation of the Waffle House logo that their lawyers would argue would "confuse the average consumer", and he was using the "Waffle House" name in a domain. In something that was actually directly related to the real Waffle House. Unfortunately, their lawyers would have an easy time with that lawsuit

For this to be trademark infringement, wouldn't he need to be selling products or services that compete with Waffle House? I don't think this is an obvious easy win for the WH lawyers at all, apart from the fact that they would have much greater legal resources.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#55

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:54 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #41

xyst wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

> You don't need a lawyer to go to a courtroom

That...depends on how much you care about the outcome.

> 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.

If they "take you to court" to force a takedown, they are already suing you (for an equitable remedy.) The marginal cost of adding a claim for damages and, on top of that, lawyers fees and costs (which, as you note, may well exceed the actual damages), is very close to $0 once they are already doing that. So, you may choose not to pay for a lawyer for yourself, but that won't stop you from paying for lawyers for the firm suing you.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#56

Post by dylan604 » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

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"

If the WH legal dogs needed this as an the impetus for that change in 2020s, then they aren't very good legal dogs. ToS updates are pretty common, and if some one didn't like scraping, you'd think that unauthorized text would be added some time ago. It's not like scraping is a new thing. If they are savvy legal teams, this should pretty much be boiler plate language. Only neophyte legal teams would not expect scraping as something to expend ink.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#57

Post by dylan604 » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

DoctorOW wrote: post #20

mushufasa wrote: post #13

FYI it is literally required by law that, to maintain a trademark, the company with the trademark must actively enforce it on an ongoing basis. Even if this side-project was benign, Waffle House must send cease-and-desist letters to maintain their trademark generally under US law. That said, if the author had posted a tracker of Waffle House closures descriptively, without using their marks or branding, that would be…

Couldn't they just draft up a license to give them permission to use it?

It's much cheaper/easier to send the C&D. Licensing would mean a department to handle the licensing. They'd have to accept request for new licenses. They'd have to maintain the service being licensed. They'd have check for compliance with licensing terms. So the legal team rightly said, fuck that, here's a C&D.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#58

Post by xyst » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #41

xyst wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

It works because the populace is tired, broke, and minimal time and effort to deal with it.

I don’t know many people that would purposefully drag themselves through the court system out of principle. Maybe those with enough free time on their hands and money to delegate/consult with lawyers.

You are probably right though. If a majority of people rejected the cease and desist orders and actually called their bluff about vague legal action. Then these legal tactics would become useless, and the recovery in whatever damages to their "trademark" would be far less than the cost to hire even junior legal teams at big firms.

Maybe you should test your principles. Recreate this persons website idea, wait for Waffle House corporate lackey to send C&D, then you show us how it’s done. Instead of doing your armchair "should have, would have, could have" analysis.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#59

Post by dylan604 » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

Molitor5901 wrote: post #7

Terrible response from Waffle House. After all this time they should know better.

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.

Re: Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House

#60

Post by drob518 » Wed, May 28, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #52

JohnMakin wrote: post #40

Cease and desists are the equivalent of asking firmly but nicely in the legal world. They don't hold any legal bearing or obligate you to any sort of response. They are usually hoping you get intimidated into doing what they ask. You can always call their bluff and say 'no,' although I see in comments the OP neglected to mention they also patched/fixed the technique used to get this data so it probably was more of th…

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. However, you should always speak to a lawyer if you get any kind of legal notice, but especially of this type. Never assume, thats how things can go sideways, even if you may initially have had standing to dispute the notice. Always talk to a lawyer before taking any action in situations like this.

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