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I'm surprised at some of the comments here that don't see Waffle House's side of this. You're a company, and some third party makes a website that very much lo

I'm surprised at some of the comments here that don't see Waffle House's side of this. You're a company, and some third party makes a website that very much looks like it could be official, using your name and logo in part, and this website is purporting to know the open/close status of your stores. Literally an indicator if people should bother going out to spend money at your business or not. An actual signal to economic performance of your entire corperation. Now, this person is using your own data from your own websites to update this map. But, you do not control that person. They are not an employee. What if their scraping scheme breaks? What if their implementation has some bug and shows stores closed that are not closed. What if they get pissy and decide to just randomly start showing locations as closed just to F with you. If the site got very popular and you had no control over it, you could could be losing customers and have no way to fix it. It's a seriously irresponsible move to allow people this kind of leeway with your brand and trademarks. Even if it seems they mean well at first.

Molitor5901 1y ago
I think we all see Waffle House's side of this, but there is a best, better, and worst way to engage a customer. A cease and desist is the worst, it's taking something which could have been handled by PR, to a legal threat. Regardless of Waffle House's legal rights, which they do have, from a public perception and way to run a company it was not the right approach. They should have embraced this guy and his website, engage him, and through that channel let him know "hey, you can't use our trademarks, etc. so you'll need to rebrand, but we love what you're doing and want to help." Vastly different approach with a much better upswing.
- throwaway173738 1y ago
  That “want to help” phrase implies a level of support that they might not have resources to give.
- itishappy 1y ago
  They might not want to help. They could host this data themselves, they obviously already have the data, but instead they removed the way it could be scraped. The connotations here may not be perceived as purely positive. For example, it could be perceived as putting extra stress on Waffle House employees.
- hinkley 1y ago
  I think it's like 'needs work' in a pull request. What one person sees as just honest feedback another sees as starting a fight that didn't need to be one. And a lot of tech people have learned to hit back when they think they're being bullied. Because bullies don't stop until they're bleeding in front of witnesses. Let's get this over now instead of dragging it out. You've escalated where threat of escalation should have sufficed. Hey we need you to change your site to make it obvious this is a fan site and not ours. Otherwise we'll have to send a properly lawyery letter in a few weeks if we don't hear back from you about a plan. One of these throws a person's life into utter chaos. The other gives them time to be a grownup about it.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    From a lawyer perspective though, a cease & desist is a threat of escalation. A lawsuit is the escalation. A cease and desist is a strongly worded letter that isn't really legally binding or anything. The issue here is just impedance mismatch on the language. The legal department is used to doing things in legal terms, and probably sends out like a lot of cease and desists. And most of the targets of those also have lawyers who are speaking the same language, so it works. Just when it's a random individual getting the letter, there's a lot more confusion.
- cloudpushers 1y ago
  We run a search and chat company and felt particularly compelled to send a demo to a customer using a competitor's API. The search was so poor and slow, we saw it as an easy lay up. Our mistake was posting it all over X and LinkedIn. We got hit with a cease and desist so fast. Marked as wrong timing in the CRM and moved on!
- dfxm12 1y ago
  How can you assert what is the right approach in this situation? What if they don't love what he's doing? If this is about PR, as one data point, I don't think any differently of anyone involved. I wouldn't if Waffle House engaged him either.
- seligerasmus 1y ago
  The C&D isn't for the customers, it's for Waffle House. Apprising a party of their infringement and putting them on notice is a crucial procedural step for potential litigation. >They should have embraced this guy and his website, engage him, and through that channel let him know "hey, you can't use our trademarks, etc. so you'll need to rebrand, but we love what you're doing and want to help." I don't mean this cynically or rhetorically, but: why? I get that this is a fun and humorous side project for the creator, but I don't see any real upside for Waffle House in supporting it. If Waffle House wanted to lean into the proxy-for-FEMA marketing angle, it'd be much better off doing it in-house, where it'd have complete creative control. More likely, Waffle House marketing strategists crunched the numbers and are understandably hesitant to expand branding based on national disasters and the woeful state of government response infrastructure. We do this every year when Nintendo sends an icy C&D to some quirky project built on its IP. Techies rend their garments about the deplorable state of IP law, and forecast imminent fallout from all the "bad PR" and "missed opportunities," as if there's a vast, highly sensitive market segment of temporarily aggrieved nerds that has somehow gone unaccounted for in its sprawling global marketing strategy. "I'll never buy a Nintendo product again!" says the 42-year-old Senior Software Engineer with 312 unplayed games in his Steam library, and the money-printing machine continues to hum unabated.
- listenallyall 1y ago
  What gives you the impression that WH loves what he was doing? The company has never embraced its utility as a disaster index.
caycep 1y ago
I wonder if they have the bandwidth/expertise at the company to hire him, or at least ink a marketing contract w/ their PR department
- mk_stjames 1y ago
  They literally have a locations information site, which has a map, and shows if the locations are open or closed. So, they already have a web team capable of doing this because they already have it. https://locations.wafflehouse.com/ https://locations.wafflehouse.com/ What this person did was summarize this to a single map with red dots and a "% closed" indicator at the top. And tying it to the connotation that it is due to storms/natural disasters with the "index" moniker. Not something Waffle House really needed.
  - jasonjayr 1y ago
    .. maybe not need, but it could have been an easy win for for a viral marketing campaign, as well as feeding that "lore" of the Waffle House index.
superultra 1y ago
To add to that - if a company is not actively protecting the trademark, even in well intentioned cases, then someone can use the trademark and point to a precedent of the brand not defending its trademark, especially if it’s probable that the company was aware of the usage. Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark. Time to change that braindead law then. Copyright has a "fair use" provision, and trademark law could be adapted similarly.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    You can use a trademark any time you want. How would brand recognition work if people couldn't talk about Mustangs and Corvettes? What you can't do is claim it's yours. Or let people think it's yours.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > You can use a trademark any time you want. No, you can't. If you could use it whenever yoh want, we wouldnt have the concept of “nominative fair use” as the exceptional case of when and how you are allowed to use someone else’s mark in commerce without permission.
      - hinkley 1y ago
        Mmm. “Anything” is maybe hyperbole. You can’t represent yourself or product as a brand. But you can write a scathing review about them and use their name and nobody can stop you. That wouldn’t be a trademark situation, it would be defamation, not infringement.
  - deleted 1y ago
lenerdenator 1y ago
Completely valid, but a cease-and-desist? C'mon. You're Waffle House. Give your attorney an undershirt, mullet, and broken whisky bottle and challenge me in the parking lot.
bredren 1y ago
Websites have been creating, collating and displaying combinations of user generated data and business-provided data for a long time. For example, customer reviews on yelp or google places. People make decisions on whether to try going to a place or not on this all the time. Sites use company logos in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is display in image SERPs, whether they fit brand guidelines or not. The difference is this was a small site without the leverage to ignore WH. The data should be accurate as possible, and if it isn't, the person should take the site down for that reason. But otherwise, they should have just changed the branding and kept it up.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Molitor5901 1y ago

I think we all see Waffle House's side of this, but there is a best, better, and worst way to engage a customer. A cease and desist is the worst, it's taking something which could have been handled by PR, to a legal threat. Regardless of Waffle House's legal rights, which they do have, from a public perception and way to run a company it was not the right approach. They should have embraced this guy and his website, engage him, and through that channel let him know "hey, you can't use our trademarks, etc. so you'll need to rebrand, but we love what you're doing and want to help." Vastly different approach with a much better upswing.

throwaway173738 1y ago
That “want to help” phrase implies a level of support that they might not have resources to give.
itishappy 1y ago
They might not want to help. They could host this data themselves, they obviously already have the data, but instead they removed the way it could be scraped. The connotations here may not be perceived as purely positive. For example, it could be perceived as putting extra stress on Waffle House employees.
hinkley 1y ago
I think it's like 'needs work' in a pull request. What one person sees as just honest feedback another sees as starting a fight that didn't need to be one. And a lot of tech people have learned to hit back when they think they're being bullied. Because bullies don't stop until they're bleeding in front of witnesses. Let's get this over now instead of dragging it out. You've escalated where threat of escalation should have sufficed. Hey we need you to change your site to make it obvious this is a fan site and not ours. Otherwise we'll have to send a properly lawyery letter in a few weeks if we don't hear back from you about a plan. One of these throws a person's life into utter chaos. The other gives them time to be a grownup about it.
- dmoy 1y ago
  From a lawyer perspective though, a cease & desist is a threat of escalation. A lawsuit is the escalation. A cease and desist is a strongly worded letter that isn't really legally binding or anything. The issue here is just impedance mismatch on the language. The legal department is used to doing things in legal terms, and probably sends out like a lot of cease and desists. And most of the targets of those also have lawyers who are speaking the same language, so it works. Just when it's a random individual getting the letter, there's a lot more confusion.
cloudpushers 1y ago
We run a search and chat company and felt particularly compelled to send a demo to a customer using a competitor's API. The search was so poor and slow, we saw it as an easy lay up. Our mistake was posting it all over X and LinkedIn. We got hit with a cease and desist so fast. Marked as wrong timing in the CRM and moved on!
dfxm12 1y ago
How can you assert what is the right approach in this situation? What if they don't love what he's doing? If this is about PR, as one data point, I don't think any differently of anyone involved. I wouldn't if Waffle House engaged him either.
seligerasmus 1y ago
The C&D isn't for the customers, it's for Waffle House. Apprising a party of their infringement and putting them on notice is a crucial procedural step for potential litigation. >They should have embraced this guy and his website, engage him, and through that channel let him know "hey, you can't use our trademarks, etc. so you'll need to rebrand, but we love what you're doing and want to help." I don't mean this cynically or rhetorically, but: why? I get that this is a fun and humorous side project for the creator, but I don't see any real upside for Waffle House in supporting it. If Waffle House wanted to lean into the proxy-for-FEMA marketing angle, it'd be much better off doing it in-house, where it'd have complete creative control. More likely, Waffle House marketing strategists crunched the numbers and are understandably hesitant to expand branding based on national disasters and the woeful state of government response infrastructure. We do this every year when Nintendo sends an icy C&D to some quirky project built on its IP. Techies rend their garments about the deplorable state of IP law, and forecast imminent fallout from all the "bad PR" and "missed opportunities," as if there's a vast, highly sensitive market segment of temporarily aggrieved nerds that has somehow gone unaccounted for in its sprawling global marketing strategy. "I'll never buy a Nintendo product again!" says the 42-year-old Senior Software Engineer with 312 unplayed games in his Steam library, and the money-printing machine continues to hum unabated.
listenallyall 1y ago
What gives you the impression that WH loves what he was doing? The company has never embraced its utility as a disaster index.

caycep 1y ago

I wonder if they have the bandwidth/expertise at the company to hire him, or at least ink a marketing contract w/ their PR department

mk_stjames 1y ago
They literally have a locations information site, which has a map, and shows if the locations are open or closed. So, they already have a web team capable of doing this because they already have it. https://locations.wafflehouse.com/ https://locations.wafflehouse.com/ What this person did was summarize this to a single map with red dots and a "% closed" indicator at the top. And tying it to the connotation that it is due to storms/natural disasters with the "index" moniker. Not something Waffle House really needed.
- jasonjayr 1y ago
  .. maybe not need, but it could have been an easy win for for a viral marketing campaign, as well as feeding that "lore" of the Waffle House index.

superultra 1y ago

To add to that - if a company is not actively protecting the trademark, even in well intentioned cases, then someone can use the trademark and point to a precedent of the brand not defending its trademark, especially if it’s probable that the company was aware of the usage. Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark.

mschuster91 1y ago
> Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark. Time to change that braindead law then. Copyright has a "fair use" provision, and trademark law could be adapted similarly.
- hinkley 1y ago
  You can use a trademark any time you want. How would brand recognition work if people couldn't talk about Mustangs and Corvettes? What you can't do is claim it's yours. Or let people think it's yours.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > You can use a trademark any time you want. No, you can't. If you could use it whenever yoh want, we wouldnt have the concept of “nominative fair use” as the exceptional case of when and how you are allowed to use someone else’s mark in commerce without permission.
    - hinkley 1y ago
      Mmm. “Anything” is maybe hyperbole. You can’t represent yourself or product as a brand. But you can write a scathing review about them and use their name and nobody can stop you. That wouldn’t be a trademark situation, it would be defamation, not infringement.
- deleted 1y ago

lenerdenator 1y ago

Completely valid, but a cease-and-desist? C'mon. You're Waffle House. Give your attorney an undershirt, mullet, and broken whisky bottle and challenge me in the parking lot.

bredren 1y ago

Websites have been creating, collating and displaying combinations of user generated data and business-provided data for a long time. For example, customer reviews on yelp or google places. People make decisions on whether to try going to a place or not on this all the time. Sites use company logos in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is display in image SERPs, whether they fit brand guidelines or not. The difference is this was a small site without the leverage to ignore WH. The data should be accurate as possible, and if it isn't, the person should take the site down for that reason. But otherwise, they should have just changed the branding and kept it up.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]