71–80 of 218 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
(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 beyond those you voluntarily and knowingly undertake from disregarding than from complying wiht such a letter.)
It's a shame this sort of thing leads to legal threats instead of job offers. Still, I wonder why the author didn't keep it up and just remove the branding - call it the "Waffle Home Index" or something.
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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…
> 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 a…
Note that in the US, the usual rule does not allow for shifting attorney's fees to the loser.
I can understand, particularly with the branding, that they would want you to stop making people think that is an official site. Imagine the scraper breaks for 24 hours and in that time, several WHs shut down due to a natural disaster. Someone looks at this site, decides to travel in their car, and gets electrocuted by a downed power line. They sue WH because they were relying on that information, and by goodness it…
if the issue was just using the trademark and likeness, why not just remove those issues of contention, and keep the site up and running under a different domain? it wasn't mentioned that they had an issue with the data scraping.
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 :)
I can understand, particularly with the branding, that they would want you to stop making people think that is an official site. Imagine the scraper breaks for 24 hours and in that time, several WHs shut down due to a natural disaster. Someone looks at this site, decides to travel in their car, and gets electrocuted by a downed power line. They sue WH because they were relying on that information, and by goodness it…
Or, employees begin to rely on domain squatter's map, argue with supervisor over whether they need to come into work, and N employees lost their jobs because of a third-party misinformation site.
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 :)
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What a missed opportunity on the part of Waffle House. How disappointing (and dumb)! I would have hoped that if they had the sense to send out a cease and desist (because somebody obviously knew that "the waffle house index" was in the cultural zeitgeist -- heck, it even has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index ) ... that they would have the good sense to work with somebody on a we…
The issue is moreso that they exclusively control their brand, and by letting someone else - who doesn't work for them and need not listen to them - control part of that, they are indirectly loosening control of their brand and narrative. They probably do not want the additional headache of buying this product, onboarding it, managing it, etc. The easiest but unfortunate solution here, to limit risk and liability, is…
Why aren't they insisting that FEMA not use their brand when talking about "the waffle house index"?