[thelist] Logo Design (infringement) help requested

Belinda Johnson belinda at prodsol.net
Sat Jun 28 18:33:54 CDT 2003


> Belinda, I think you also need to consider that you, I assume, have a
> contract to provide a service to your client and would likely be in breech
> of that by taking his site down.

Just to clarify - I wouldn't do that either - the removal of the site even
temporarily was done through mutual discussion between myself, the
webmaster, and the owner. Ironically - my advice was NOT to take it down -
even before I had posted to this list for advice - because as I've said - I
KNOW for a fact that there was no copying of the logo and we have mountains
of dated graphics files that were from start to finish and corresponding
emails discussions during that time period as well - and I suggested that
even by the precautionary measure of removing the site it could be viewed as
an admission of guilt, but both the owner and webmaster made the decision to
place the temporary page at least until Monday when hopefully the owner will
be in verbal contact with the hypnosis company to discuss the actual issues.

I thank everyone who has contributed to this discussion - I know none of us
are lawyers - I got what I hoepd for though - "real people" answers/opinions
from which to make informed decisions.  Very much appreciated.

I thought you might appreciate seeing the response I recieved this afternoon
from the CEO in reply to my email to him last night.

"The reason that I wrote to you is that it has been our experience that we
get better results when we contact hosts versus webmasters.  We attempted
the former and had no response.  Especially in this case we felt it
necessary.  We routinely have people trying to use our name.  What makes
this case particularly egregious is the following:  First of all, it is
reasonable to assume that anyone wanting to use the name Positive Changes
would have attempted to get the .com site first.  In doing so they would
have undoubtedly come across our site.  Having done so, it is beyond belief
that they didn't notice our distinctive logo and trade dress.  For them to
then put what they did on the web is clearly an attempt to mimic our trade
marked material.  It was clearly premeditated. No doubt their logo is a
little different but it is preposterous to assume that it is mere
coincidence.

  I appreciate your involvement and we will have our legal folks take up the
issue directly with your client.  We intend to seek injunctive relief
including the turning over of the .biz site to us.  We were successful in
doing just that recently with a gentleman who was using a site called
positivechangeshypnosis.com/.org and .biz."



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