rob

Ah, in that case yes its real

A good heads up for anyone with TM names who think DRS and free handover is the worst that can happen!

grantw

Personally I'd call them, the clocks ticking.

Grant

jasman

What about the £100-a-time letters they keep sending? I wouldn't want to sit around and give them an opportunity to keep sending more letters and profit from the situation even more.

GreyWing

What letters would they be justified in sending on a weekly basis?

The delay is not harming their client's business, they have already conceded that the domains should be handed over. They have no right to keep sending you letters over and over again whilst you look into the matter or seek help.

For example if they say "you have 1 minute to reply" does that mean they can send you a hundred pound letter every 1 minute you don't reply?

What about every 20 minutes?
Everey day?
Every week?

Just because they claim to set the time limit doesn't mean they do in reality.

The law sets the responce to these letters by saying a "reasonable amount of time", if they send you letters for no reason and don't mitigate their costs it isn't the defendants responsibility and will be thrown out by the court.

So whilst one letter a week would be reasonable if you were still in ownership of the names, it would not be responsible in sending a letter once a week whilst seeking an admission of costs!

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essexboy

Send them back 100 letters at £100 a pop saying money on it's way and hey presto they owe you £10k! sorry not a funny matter.

RedRichard

Hi,

You clearly need the advice of a trade mark solicitor, if the firm that Grant has advised can’t resolve this send me a PM and I will provide you with details of a Trade mark solicitors we use that have exceptional experience in these matters, they have resolved various TM issues for our company – this is a specialist area.

My own thoughts on this are as follows:-

To be in breach of a trade mark the following normally have to present:-

1. Your mark used and the registered mark have to be identical – exactly the same.
2. You are using the mark for the exact same services or business nature
3. The public would be confused by your company and that of the registered owners business

Based on what you write, yes it was perhaps foolish to register a similar domain name but it’s not exactly the same, only similar and I’m not sure parking it with adwords on or whatever would constitute passing off, also i doubt a judge if it went to the high court would rule that there was any public confusion, but I’m no legal expert.

The other thing that bothers me with this is I can’t see how they have arrived at the compensation level they claim. Yes if a company were to sue you for damages and win they could recover their outlay but this is a solicitor making a figure up with a restricted time frame to respond in and that doesn’t sound right to me. In fact it smells like a try on to me and it’s not up to them to suggest how you finance the compensation that also doesn’t sound right.

Best advice for you is to get an expert opinion.

In the meantime do not answer this firm directly that would be very foolish, you could say something to them that could be used against you in this case and don’t sign anything!

You are prepared to sign the domains over to their client and I would have thought that would resolve the issue, that’s if it is their client that has raised the objection and this is not some two bit practice looking for quick bucks from situations like this where they are not officially appointed by the client.

If their client had issued a WIPO against you it would have cost them circa £1500 x 5 domains to achieve this, i.e. getting the domains off you and that would have been the end of it. To then sue for damages is often more than it’s worth because they would have to establish financial loss and for parking a domain its hardly the same as setting up a similar business in computers using their name on a website and that’s if proof can be established that you are in breach of the three points I’ve mentioned.

Anyway, good luck on this, get the legal help and hopefully it can be resolved quickly and you can put the matter behind you.

Rich

MrBob

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but just wondering how this panned out and what was the outcome?

newguy

Bump.

As above, any news on how this panned out?