11 ms·

I actually had something somewhat similar happen to me, but with Twitter. https://breue.com/twitter https://breue.com/twitter https://breue.com/86851616.pdf ht

• lostlogin 6y ago
  Like the story here, your one is a story that needs broadcasting widely. It sounds like you took the pragmatic approach but that had to hurt a lot.
• pier25 6y ago
  > but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford Can someone explain how does that work?
  • quercusa 6y ago
    Twitter has lots of money to spend on lawyers; he didn't. (The US does not have a 'loser pays' legal system.)
    • steego 6y ago
      We get that. He’s asking for someone to explain how the legal system allows a big business to force a smaller business to spend money on legal fees. Also, how do other countries protect the little guy from frivolous lawsuits?
      • stormdennis 6y ago
        I'm thinking of the Mclibel lawsuit. McDonald's couldn't scare their defendants off because they were "men of straw".
        • dredmorbius 6y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case
        • not2b 6y ago
          The UK is far worse than the US when it comes to libel law: if a big company sues, the burden of proof is on the individual sued to document every statement. In the US, the plaintiff has the burden of proving that the statements were false and damaging.
          • paulpauper 6y ago
            yeah, but is is much harder for plaintiffs to collect in the UK than in the US. Losing a lawsuit in the UK is not nearly as bad as losing one in the US because the Uk has really crappy asset recovery procedures. The US requires losers to disclose everything under the penalty of perjury.
            • Aerroon 6y ago
              It might be more difficult to collect, but there is an undue burden on the individual when the court tries to determine the truth of the matter.
      • 6y ago
  • wldcordeiro 6y ago
    You as an individual or a small company being built off the savings of an individual cannot afford the myriad of legal fees associated with the process the large corporation is putting you through. It's really not hard to understand how a company with billions in the bank can literally just "war of attrition" you into losing any case, even ones they have no standing to win.
    • pier25 6y ago
      But doesn't the state provide a free lawyer to anyone that needs one? (if that's not obvious, I'm not from the US btw)
      • astura 6y ago
        Not in civil cases, only criminal
      • ummonk 6y ago
        Not for civil cases. But again for something like this I don't see why you would rather drop the issue and capitulate rather than at least try to fight it out without a lawyer.
        • sowbug 6y ago
          To "fight it out without a lawyer" runs the risk of the court resolving the case against you and awarding damages, most pathetically via entry of default judgment if you can't even figure out how to properly file an initial response to the complaint. Not to mention your own time likely being better spent elsewhere.
      • paulpauper 6y ago
        that only applies for criminal cases, not civil
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
  • gundmc 6y ago
    Lawyers are expensive. Court cases take a very long time. It doesn't matter if you win the judgment if you run out of money in the process.
    • bonoboTP 6y ago
      Why do I have to pay anything just for getting sued? The other party should make the case that I infringed on their rights. If I'm sure I'm in the clear, why do I have to move even just my pinky finger? What fees do I have to pay? I don't care about the process, don't want to submit anything. Is there a fee for getting sued? As far as I understand, the problem in America is that nonaction is often assumed to be an admission of guilt. But "actions" often cost money, or can only be legally performed by lawyers who take insane hourly wages. Crazy system.
      • ficklepickle 6y ago
        Based on the legal TV shows I've seen, you can get drowned by motions. If the other side files a motion, you have to respond to it. If they have a large legal team, they can pull more legal manoeuvres than your side can even read, let alone respond to.
      • tossthere 6y ago
        Yep! Lawyers basically just look for legal entities with money, and exploit the justice system to take as much of it as they can without bankrupting the source. Constant flow. They’re like a tax paid by every person or company with a significant sum of money in America. Doesn’t matter if they’re right or wrong, grounds or no grounds, there will still be a team of lawyers on your side taking your money to “defend” you. Does your lawyer’s $20,000 motion really have any chance of succeeding? Did he really have to pay that company $12,000 to convert all your files to TIFFs? Did he really spend 16 hours on that letter, or does he have 95% of it saved in a template somewhere? At first you’re happy to have lawyers on your side. But eventually you realize even the ones defending you are in on the same game, and are just there to rob you. Don’t ever tell anyone you have money or that your company is successful.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • porknubbins 6y ago
    I think the part of the answer is that in the US legal system the discovery process is disproportionately expansive and expensive, being adversarial in nature, as opposed to many civil law countries where the judge tells both parties what documents they will have to produce so that the judge can rule. Here you argue with each other why you both need to review 100k or millions of results of keyword searches. Actually an individual or very small company litigant would be at an advantage not having much in the way of records to search.
    • Thorentis 6y ago
      I don't think it is as simple as civil vs common law differences. The fact that legal professionals charge so much money for glorified word processing and petty arguing is the problem. Especially given the over supply of legal graduates and ever lower quality of judges you will face.
  • bdcravens 6y ago
    Discovery requests. Quantity of, and postponement of, hearings. Travel expenses. Meetings with your attorney(s) at the cost of several hundred or thousands of dollars per hour. Time and effort required by your staff. Potential injunctions, paralyzing revenue and fundraising while you wait for resolution of the case.
    • akvadrako 6y ago
      That does not sound like minimal effort. I would say minimal effort means getting the cheapest lawyer you can find and having him comment on quick replies you draft yourself to any requests you get.
• chrisan 6y ago
  Curious what is the worst case outcome if one were to just put minimal effort into the legal process, basically just simply state your case and hope judge thinks other side is crazy? For example, in breue's case he had enough money for lawyers, but pretend it was the same scenario only breue was an 18yo still living with his parents (who are not wealthy theoretically) Does the judge just blindly believe everything Twitter says since they have lawyers?
  • kxrm 6y ago
    I can give a perspective. I was filing a trademark (US) for an application that I am developing on the side. A gaming market place company opposed the trademark claiming possibility of confusion. They filed the opposition, I was determined to go to discovery with it. After I filed my response denying all allegations, they blinked and we made a small change to the description of the trademark. (Something that I had offered them from the beginning). From my perspective the worst that could happen is I would get to the point where I needed a lawyer (actual discovery) and could determine if it was necessary to continue. Filing an answer to an opposition is not difficult and a little online searching goes a long way to help you avoid making mistakes answering the opposition suit.
    • networkimprov 6y ago
      This. You have to call a bully's possible bluff when you can do so on a shoestring. They may seem to have unlimited resources, but a legal dept doesn't actually have a bottomless budget, and it has to demonstrate ROI to the CFO's office. Many attorneys you might consult won't realize this, because they can't conceive of a scenario where you don't need maximal legal representation. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like... :-)
      • patentatt 6y ago
        It’s a little more nuanced than that. Lawyers have ethical obligations to provide sound legal advice and counseling, whether they’re paid for it or not. As in, the legal ethics structure doesn’t really allow for (purposely and knowingly) doing a shoddy job. The lawyer could be on the hook for either doing a bunch of free work or getting disbarred by signing up to do a ‘bare minimum’ job. Maybe there should be a carve out for situations like this.
• hnick 6y ago
  I had a similar case that I helped a relative with. They had a similar word in their business name as a foreign (popular at the time) baking company. My reading in Australia implied they had no real case either, the standards for Trademark infringement are relatively tight and case by case (see https://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/2064/thats-crazy-john.aspx https://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/2064/thats-crazy-john.as... for one case where the industry is the same and names are very similar but branding is not). The notice was apparently triggered by an application for a local Trademark which tripped their alarms. But as with you, it wasn't worth the fight. We got a cheap legal aid person to draft a letter saying we thought they didn't have a case but we'd play along if they covered our fees for renaming the business and updating stationery/website/etc. In the end it worked out OK and the business was renamed. I think she made a slight profit if you don't factor in the stress.
• ponker 6y ago
  It’s sad to see how much the “justice system” just perpetuates injustice. Nothing like what it does in criminal law but still sucks.
• giancarlostoro 6y ago
  Wow Scoper seems like such a great concept too... What a darn shame...
• JSavageOne 6y ago
  > Our lawyer let us know that they had no strong grounds against us, but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford. This is a clear failure of our justice system.
  • balladeer 6y ago
    You mean "legal" system.
  • linuxftw 6y ago
    Clearly the large corporations disagree.
  • ghastmaster 6y ago
    It is definitely not a perfect system. The problem is society in general accepts this behavior. It is an absurd claim on its face. They should face social pressure for this behavior. The only thing that I think could make our various systems better is to change what we accept; outside of those systems. The media we are sold and consume should reflect what is important to us. If cases like this were blasted across the twitter verse and people actually cared, it would stop once the spending decreases following the exposure. We are seeing that in other arenas. I remember reading about a culture in east asia or the pacific where farmers did not have written contracts and usually had very little problems. Everyone knew what was expected and fell in line. If a farmer were to break with the norm, I am sure it would have resulted in them being ostracized. I hope one day we expect more from each other, and expect more from ourselves.
    • kunai 6y ago
      At the core of the problem is that society is not allowed to not accept this behavior. The systems by which Apple et al abuse their positions to harm small businesses and "the little" guy are literally enshrined in our legal and administrative code. Government decisions of the last 30 years, often regardless of party, have resulted in the single largest consolidation of corporate power under six umbrellas (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix) in Silicon Valley history. Extraordinarily lax antitrust laws (in both Republican and Democratic administrations, you'd expect the Dems to be tougher on this but follow the money trail and it's simple to see why), a general disdain for shareholder activism, and corporate culture in all of the aforementioned companies prioritizing the needs of advertisers over the needs of the end user. > The media we are sold and consume should reflect what is important to us. If cases like this were blasted across the twitter verse and people actually cared, it would stop I would have agreed with you fifteen, maybe ten years ago. The point of no return has been passed. Apple and Amazon alone are worth enough combined for public opinion to matter nil in terms of their actual business practices. They could suffer millions of dollars in bad press and shareholders would continue to invest and consumers would continue to buy product. Look at TSLA as a fantastic example -- Elon consistently sticks his foot in his mouth and makes a mockery of himself but TSLA short sellers continue to lose big time. The only solution at this point in my view is a fundamental overhaul of antitrust law and safeguards to ensure competition in cutting edge industries, and collectivization of essentials like public internet and public utilities so the profit incentive doesn't get in the way of service. We're already seeing how terrible the outcome is with the Post Office, we don't need any additional privatization in the world of tech.
• gscott 6y ago
  There is a good lawsuit Godzilla vs BagZilla. Bagzilla won. http://bgbg.blogspot.com/2002/08/zillegalities.html http://bgbg.blogspot.com/2002/08/zillegalities.html I created a groupware platform Officezilla (have since sold the domain). Almost as soon as I registered the domain the GodZilla trademark holders lawyers sent me a letter. I sent them a letter letting them know I appreciate their concern and to take a hike, never heard from them again. Toho Company, Ltd. v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 654 F.2d 788, 790-94 is precedent. Courts have to follow it and lawyers know it. You don't even need a lawyer to send Twitter packing.
  • fomine3 6y ago
    I wonder whether Mozilla also encountered similar lawsuit.
• user5994461 6y ago
  Same thing happened last month with Amazon. AWS decided to roll out a new product called CodeGuru, that was a well established site on Windows development (codeguru.com). That's the end of the road for them. https://thehftguy.com/2020/08/03/amazon-blatantly-taking-over-the-codeguru-trademark-from-microsoft/ https://thehftguy.com/2020/08/03/amazon-blatantly-taking-ove...
  • AsyncAwait 6y ago
    Wow, that's depressing. Maybe there needs to be some sort of a collective trademark ownership org small projects and sites could go to, which wouldn't sue somebody proactively for i.e naming their GitHub repo similarly, but would come up when legal at these large companies was running the name of their new product past existing trademarks.
    • user5994461 6y ago
      Read the article, it's explaining how to lookup trademarks ;) https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-trademark-database https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-... The trademark codeguru is not deposited by anybody, neither CodeGuru nor Amazon did their homework. Anyway the 20 years of usage should have precedence over just depositing a trademark.
      • AsyncAwait 6y ago
        My point was that it probably wasn't deposited by codeguru.com because it costs a decent chunk of money to do so and websites don't necessarily have the resources, but if there was a pooling fund, maybe they would. You'd still run the risk of Amazon just not looking it up or caring, but the legal grounds would be much more on your side, abet I agree that 20 year precedence should be strong enough in itself.
        • pmorici 6y ago
          Does it? I registered a trade mark for my small business. Didn’t require a lawyer and the fee wasn’t more than a few hundred dollars per 5 year period as I recall.
• moneywoes 6y ago
  Sad to hear that, this really kills the american dream.
• kazinator 6y ago
  > Our lawyer let us know that they had no strong grounds against us, but would drain us in a legal battle we could never afford. s/but would/but that he would/ FTFY
• kazinator 6y ago
  > They gave us a super low amount of money I'd have taken the money, and then not done anything.