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Ask HN: I just received a cease and desist letter. What next?
I just received a cease-and-desist letter regarding the name of one of my projects. A company alleges that the name of my project interferes with their trademark (their trademark is the first two words of my project name).
So what do I need to do now? Do I need to lawyer up? Or can I reply that I'd be happy to post a statement to the project's website clarifying that there is no association in exchange for keeping the project's name?
- opless 12y agoAre you both in the same industry? Would your product/site confuse anyone (Lanham(sp?) act - I'm assuming you're in the US) ? Would it be detrimental to your business to rename? What are the facts here? Do YOU think they have a claim? You really do need to provide more data. oh, IANAL. YMMV. gg pld thx.
- mjwhansen 12y agoI suppose more details would indeed be helpful. My product is an iPhone app called "What's Open Nearby" and they have a website called "What's Open", both of which show opening hours for stores. 1) Yes. 2) We don't claim to be the other service, and have never had anyone confuse the services. 3) Possibly. We have bought domains with that name, it's our Twitter handle, etc. I don't want to fight it in court though. 4) No. The words are commonly-used and there are other similar services that use them (for example, Open Near Me). Plus, they only registered the trademark a few weeks ago (but have had the site since 2006). I'm thinking of proposing that we put a statement on the app's website that it is not associated with them. I've seen that done many times.
- opless 12y agoIt's something to move forward with, that's for sure.