Trademark Violation: What to Do?

[soniCron]

I recently learned of a casual game developer potentially violating one of my trademarks. Is there a defacto form letter I could send over to warn them, or should I just pass over a friendly note? Anyone have experience with this?

Opinions welcome.

[amaranth]

I would start with a friendly note. It's possible that they have no idea that they've infringed. If you don't hear anything back, then I would get serious.

Just my two cents!

[KNau]

If you're talking about a real registered trademark, start with a friendly letter and then notify your lawyer in case the situation isn't resolved quickly. Your lawyer would probably prefer you run all correspondence through him or her first but it's up to you if you want to try a casual e-mail first.

[soniCron]

The trademark is not registered. Neither is the offending party's use.

[arcadetown]

You still have common law trademark rights but it's a heck of a lot harder (i.e. expensive) to enforce. Just start with a stern friendly advisement and see what their reaction is, it may blow over w/o having to involve an lawyer. If end up in court note trademark/patent lawyers are about as expensive as they come.

[Tom Gilleland]

The friendly letter is certainly the first step. 99% of people are honorable and will work something out. Then if that doesn't work out you could try the threatening lawyer letter. I bet you could find do-it-yourself templates on the web. Then maybe a small claims court once you register the trademark. If you win, you will probably not be able to collect anyway.

Realize that a full civil court case will cost you at least thousands of dollars, more likely tens of thousands of dollars. I know one developer who went after a bad guy who was selling counterfit copies of the developers software. The developer ended up spending $60,000 in lawyer fees. The developer won the case, but the bad guy just dissolved his company and moved the software products into another company the next day. The developer never saw a penny. The bad guy still sells the developers software to this day! :eek:

I've come to the conclusion that criminal lawsuits are the only one that are effective. Civil suits are just to easy to get out of, unless it's a large company that has a valuable brand/reputation to protect.

Of course I'm not a lawyer, or even play one on youtube; so you may want to ignore everything I say. :)

Tom

[cliffski]

stories like that angerme. I think in that case, if your in the same country as them, a baseball bat with nails in would be your best option.
Ok I'm not that serious, but it depresses me to see people get away with stuff like that.

[zoombapup]

Or build in some more checks into your software to advise customers that they have an illegal version of the software (and pop up a website telling them where they can obtain a legal copy and why you think thiers is illegal).

At the end of the day, having some kind of server auth system to me seems the right way to go (basically a dynamic DRM system of sorts).

[Stridge]

Hi all!

Definitively the friendly approach is the best without any threats. You have to explain your point of view to the guy, maybe as mention he isn’t aware of it. Maybe he’s trying to see how it goes see if he can get away with it, he is in some sort nibbling on your brand.

A similar thing happen to us few years back, with our dialer 2000, ( a modem connection tool), the product had great reviews by ziff-davis (zdnet), it has boosted our sales in a way we were astonished! :eek:

Anyway, a guy launched a product called RAS+Dialer2000 which was a poor combination of 2 software philosophy.

We did nothing, being young and inexperienced or because we had no forum to ask advice to. we decided to let it be, believing to would simply crash. It confused the customer, it’s hard to measure but we think it hurt the product real bad. From that experience we learned a brand is important a brand is more important that the product in some case. You got to protect you brand fiercely. :mad:

But don’t start a war already, a friendly, registered, communication at first… and see what happen.

But, you got to set a delay for retraction. So, if there’s no reaction you can move on to some more serious. (…)

Maybe you could get a group of friends to use the good old flame mail trick… who knows!

And the nailed baseball bat of Mr. Cliffski Corleone, is still an option, bham! Right on the knee cap! ;)

[ManuTOO]

if this trademark is not especially famous, there's more chance it's a coincidence than something else...

soniCron, already 4 days since the OP, how are things going, did you get an answer ..?

[LilGames]

Soni, you sure this trademark is unique? Also did you put "TM" everywhere? If you didn't, it seriously undermines your position. But regardless, a letter and discussion with the other party is still worth having.

[soniCron]

I sat down to write a lengthy post, but decided to wait to post a response until the issue has been resolved. However, I'm following this thread, so please keep asking questions and posting suggestions and I'll be sure to get to them once this thing blows over.

[soniCron]

I just realized I never updated this thread. Long story short: Turns out it's a non-issue - everything's kosher. Thanks for the interest, guys! :)