[thelist] copyright help

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Sat Apr 27 13:24:01 CDT 2002


On Saturday, April 27, 2002, at 05:33  pm, James S. Huggins (Evolt)
wrote:

> Also, trademarks can be registered and unregistered.

Some people may have seen that the EasyGroup
(http://www.easyjet.com/ etc) started coming the heavy
with holders of domains that were easywhatever.

While they never came calling for me, I took legal advice,
and was recommended to make sure whenever asked,
to respond that easyweb was an unregistered trademark,
in constant use since 1996, and so put that in my site's legal
info. If I were being really strict, I'd put (tm) whenever I mentioned
it (if it were registered, it would be ® or (R)).

I would go back to them and say "Could you give me
documentation regarding your trademark registration in
the UK?" I would be *very* surprised if they've done it,
let alone before you started using the name.

Another way to handle it might be to email a clarification -
you would be prepared to restrict your use of your unregistered
trademark to areas outside the US, as long as they restrict their
use of their trademark to inside the US (this is largely impossible btw,
as it would take blocking DNS at national borders, but it make make
them shut up and go away).

'Chip' writing the letter (and getting it wrong) suggests
they don't have a lot of legal expertise, or advice.


Cheers
Martin
_______________________________________________
email: martin at easyweb.co.uk             PGP ID:	0xA835CCCB
	martin at members.evolt.org      snailmail:	30 Shandon Place
   tel:	+44 (0)774 063 9985				Edinburgh,
   url:	http://www.easyweb.co.uk			Scotland




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