What to do with a cease and desist
So I have one of my side projects running for about a year now earning a few hundred a month. I didnt think much of it for months, sort of left it running on its own devices. Suddenly this morning theres a cease and desist letter from one of the bigger companies saying that I have infringed on their trademark names. Now these guys are based in the US and I am in AU. Does that matter. What do you guys usually do with these types of scenarios. How would you tell the existing users (around 20k)
Thanks
You could change the name? Unless it is 100% critical you keep that name for the business? What industry is it in?
Did you break law? You have the right to reply to those letters.
Basically, this is how it works.
First - you get the letter. A few days later, same letters are sent to your domain name registrar and hosting provider. From there it can become nasty, some hosting companies will shut down your server with no warning and no way to access data.
Thanks for Bart. That does sound bad.. I might have to stop the site then and offload the data somewhere else. So I wasnt aware that I am infringing on their trademark names.
But do you really infringe on their trademark? A lot of those C&D are semi-manual semi-automatic stuff, so there is some space for false positive.
This. You have to understand, companies have a legal obligation to pursue every possible trademark violation, or else they risk losing their trademark (eg. think of how you can use a word like "xerox" to just mean "copy", when it once was a trademark).
So just because you got a C&D it doesn't in any way mean you actually violated their trademark ... it's just that they have some software that scans for other uses of their name and then they send C&D notices to anything it finds.
That doesn't mean it's not serious though; even if you are 100% within your rights to use the name, you also have to convince your ISP and similar 3rd parties. Welcome to the American legal system, where the mere threat of a lawsuit from a big company means more than actually breaking the law.
This is an interesting situation, is it possible to get more information about the C&D? Has the name been registered in Australia, or is it still possible to change?
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Hi Thomas thanks so much for this advice. So it seems like theres no trademark registered in Australia. I've followed your advice and starting to document it all now.
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what if there are users in the US?
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