Slashdot Mirror
What to do when your Domain is Threatened?
"My website offers free services to students, two of which are web based email and a student directory with full search capability yet Purdue claims that my domain infringes on the school's trademarked name. My question is, what legal rights do I have to keep my domain name? Any suggestions, or even a good lawyer whom I can call?"
Things like this make me also worry about the new cybersquatting laws that may end up putting the little-guy-with-the-neat-domain between a rock and a hard place.
ttyp0 continues: "After investigation I found that Purdue had only two names trademarked, which are "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers". I clearly state that we are not affiliated with Purdue University. There are other similar sites which use the word "Purdue" in the same fashion, such as, PURDUEPEOPLE.COM, PURDUECHAT.COM, and PURDUEDATING.COM to name a few...
I would go out and find a good intelectual property lawyer in the area. Also, lots of laywers volunteer free legal counsel to help out students, so you could probably actually get that through your school :).
Good luck.
I wouldn't worry about lawyers yet, maybe they're just making empty threats at this point. You can have *them* do the hard work by waiting. They'll consult a lawyer and ask 'em if they even have a case. If their lawyer doesn't think so, it saves you the work and money.
:)
There's no reason to worry until they sue you anyways. Once they sue you, you can start worrying about it and look for a good lawyer.
In the meanwhile, I'd reply to them that you don't agree with them, don't think your website is infringing their trademark, that it's a free service for their students, they only benefit from your website etcetc. Just to stay polite
Imho they're kinda stupid for shooting at someone who offers their customers free service.
In my humble opinion a domain name is an adress, it's a place where you put up your stuff. If they haven't registerd the domain (moved to that adress) I don't see why that would mean you are infringing on their trademark rights.
If you live in a street called lawyers lane, you're not expected to be a lawyer either, are you. I'm currently living in the Goeman Borgesiuslaan, and I'm not expecting to hear from the lawyers of his heirs, even though I freely hand out cards which state I live in the street named after him.
You moved to the adress first, you live there now. Though luck for them imho. I don't think anyone in your position has ever lost a lawsuit. But more then a few opted for a handy amount of money, that's perhaps something to consider. They don't want this lawsuit anymore then you do.
Whatever you do, don't allow them to bluff you into giving them the domainname. It's yours, it's your adress, and you followed all the right rules to acquire it. If they want it, they'll have to do or pay whatever it is worth to you.
Beware of Wight Supremacists!
Why don't you write back and tell them what you've told us Slashdotters? You don't have to be comabtive about it, just tell them that you've checked for evidence that they hold such a trademark and couldn't find any. Ask them to give you a thingy with a number or something -- there's probably a technical term for that. %^) At least you'll find out whether they stand on firm ground.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
The chicken company is spelled "Perdue."
Hey, if Sun Microsystems are the . in .com, does that mean they're going to sue us all?
:)
I have had clients in doain battles (from both sides) a few times and it ha always been a fairly drawn out process. I would advise that you be prepared for a bit of a battle.
The interesting thing in this particular case is that your site pertains to your adversary! However, as you have had the domain for 3 years and have been using it in a legal manner, I would say you have a good case to continue using it.
It strikes me that the difficult situation here may be your ISP. I would recommend that you talk to them as well, outline the situation and find out what their policy is on such manners. They have less personal interest in this case and may well decide that they can no longer host your domain to avoid legal disputes. Try and convince them that you have a strong case and that it is in their interests to continue hosting the domain.
After that, I would talk to a lawyer - hopefully someone here will have suggestions for a good lawyer with domain issue experience in the States.
Finally, I would suggest that in my humble experience, these cases don't make it to court so very often. It's like Cease and Desist Orders, which can often be resolved out of court with little hassle, as long as both sides try and keep their heads.
Good luck!
A little planning goes a long way...
However, if other sites exist with the "Purdue" name in them, and Purdue University has not threatened or sued them, their stance is shaky. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that if you have a trademark, and don't defend it uniformly, then to some degree you lose rights to it.
Another thing to consider, which potentially weakens their stance, is other businesses which have the Purdue name, but are unrelated to Purdue University. (I'm not talking domain names, but business names outside of the Internet.) The Purdue brand for chicken comes to mind. In other words, if Purdue is associated with several well-known businesses then the University's claim to anything with "Purdue" in it is greatly weakened. Since your site deals directly with the Purdue University, I'm not sure how much this counts.
In any case, the best advice is what's been stated by others: communicate with them and try to find an alternative. You're not on great legal ground to fight them.
----------
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
AC's solution is the very best deal that you could reasonably hope to get out of this. You are entirely in the right, morally speaking, and probably legally speaking too. But (this is the important bit):
1. University administrators are nasty people. If you get in their way, they will be needlessly cruel to you.
2. Universities have a million and one ways to fsck you up, whether or not you win in court. This website is not worth your whole rest of life.
3. And you will always have a hard time getting any sort of support, because people will always believe their side of things -- when people don't understand the issues, they go by reputation, and Purdue has a better one than you do.
In general, I'd advise anyone to fight like a tiger if right is on their side. But educators are such vindictive sods that I'd make an exception. Your two options are:
1. Give 'em the name, but scorch the earth, destroy your site and let them deal with the user complaints. This will annoy them, but they'll have their name, and they won't be angry enough to hurt you.
2. Co-operate fully, as per AC's suggestion. This way, you have to swallow some crow, but keep your site and keep your users happy.
What I would not do is to organise any sort of student protest. This will frighten and humiliate the admins, and they will break you on a wheel in revenge.
Of course, all this is assuming that you have some sort of life which you would like to preserve. If you're keen on fighting it out to the death, go for it, and good luck to you!
either way, look on it as a learning experience . . .
jsm
on trademark law. You need to start reading up on everything there is to know about trademarks and domain names. There's a lot of material available - I hope you have some free time to kill.
You'll want to start with the Domain Name Rights Coalition, which has a lot of good information, including a page about your rights (more specifically, the trademark holder's rights - you have no rights) under Network Solutions' trademark policies. If you pass those tests (which I believe you do, unless Purdue has a trademark on Purdue Online which predates your domain registration), you're in much better shape - NSI won't automatically shut you down. Purdue always has the option of filing suit, you see, but under certain circumstances NSI will take action preemptively against you and you'll lose without ever entering court.
Read your domain name registration agreement!
Of course, Purdue's case in court is weak. It cost them almost nothing to send this demand letter; if you knuckle under, that's a nice domain name for them with almost zero expenditure. They don't have a right to possess all domain names with Purdue in them, any more than Frank-the-chicken-guy does. You aren't attempting to extort money out of them (at least I hope not), you're providing your own independent, ongoing service. You're not attempting to confuse visitors into believing that Purdue runs the site. All of these factors are important. Read up on the criteria for actually infringing someone's trademark, like I said earlier, and send the nice lawyers a letter indicating that you know your rights and stand by them. Send them a list of all the other domain names with the string "purdue" in them - there are several sites which offer wildcard domain name searching. Don't offer to sell them the domain name. If you want to sell, you must retain a lawyer for that.
And take the time to write up some webpages about the situation and post them on purdueonline.com. Inform the school newspaper and local papers that Purdue is trying to hijack your domain name. Publicity is never a bad thing when you're in the right.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
I ran PurdueBUZZ and then consolidated my content with mrhoops.com.
One of the discussions that I have had with my three partners is that of using Purdue in the domain name.
I'd be MOST INTERESTED to know how this turns out.
Our take was that we didn't want to test the waters, per se.
Drop us a line if you have updates or questions.
F. Thorn
Go Purdue!
I go to purdue, and I went to check out your page. It is really nice, and your directory beats the hell out of the purdue directory(directory.purdue.edu). It just figures that they want to shut you down because you offer a few better things then they do. If it means anything, I am on your side!
Quid rides ignare?
It's sad, and it's unfair, and it should probably be illegal, but it happens a lot, and not just with domain names. I know of a few people myself who've had this happen to them.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Something similar happened to me.
I've written a chat software which is now called OpenVerse. When I started writing it, it was called Metaverse. But it turns out some company named SJGames owns this word (surprisingly, they only obtained a trademark for this word after the book SnowCrash was released.
It seems SJGames CONFIGURED a mush and called is Metaverse and trademarked the name.
So I'm happily working on my chat program when I get a letter from that company telling me I can't call it Metaverse cause they own the word.
I was a little upset to say the least but what can I do? I'm just a lowly free software programmer and I don't have any lawyer money to protect me from them.
I Quickly folded up Metaverse and changed the name to OpenVerse but now I worry about the next big guy to come along. What will I do then? Throw my project out the window? Fight it with no money and loose? All of these thin trademarks are really upsetting.
There should be some merrit when it comes to trademarks. I feel that simply configuring someone elses free software and then trademarking a name based on that is pretty damn thin to me.
Fish! LipHo
This is kinda obvious but I think deserves saying... You wouldn't go to a lawyer website and ask their opinion on a diagnosis your doctor made and give it more than a grain of salt, so I wouldn't in this case either.
;) ) if the case may have merit. If it might, and you don't want to deal with the hassle, compromise or give up the domain. If the case likely has no merit, then wait until they sue you and have the lawyer deal with it.
Don't trust that they don't have a case because people on here tell you they don't, the best advice anyone can give in a case like this is one that was already given. Ask a lawyer (not a nerd
One thing worth saying though, is that if you decide to wait until they sue you knowing they have a case and assuming you'll give up the domain and things will be fine at that point, you should be aware that the offer to return the domain from you is not sufficient to force them to withdraw the lawsuit, and they can choose to continue it to a court case if they want.
There are very few rules preventing malicious lawsuits here in the U.S.
Have your cease and desist letter framed and keep it as a lasting memento/badge of greatness. I have several of them and frame each new one. Perhaps a personal thing, but I do see them as a sign of the site gaining...er...notice.
In the shortterm I would do nothing more than writing a very gentle response stating that you are a non-comm site and it is your belief and understanding that your sight does not infringe on Purdue. There are several good domain defense groups/sites. Check out http://www.ajax.org/dda/ which is the sight of Domain Defense Advocates and the infamous ajax battle .
Hope this helps. If you get a second letter, please feel free to email me, I may know someone down there. Also, I am certain that Purdue School of Law has a clinic and that some young law student would love to chew on this. Good luck.
rootrot
You know, the more often I read these stories, the more I see people write "I know I'm right, but I'd rather not go to court/get sued/can't afford lawyers" etc.
It's discouraging to see that. Essentially, it's cowardice.
Partially, geeks are legal cowards because the have too much to lose - they have a lot of income potential, and they don't want to jeopardize it - and partially, I think there's a culture here that's conflict averse for anything other than text flamewars.
Personally, I'm a scrapper, descended from a line of scrappers - including people who fought Latin American dictators and faced exile and death for their convictions. I am pretty sure I would put up a fight in a situation like this - it's sad to see that few will, because you will never enjoy rights that you don't struggle for.
Do not wait. I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you that waiting to consult a lawyer (who is expirenced in this) is a bad idea.
Get a lawyer to look over the case, give you a preliminary thoughts. Take his advice, but perhaps write a letter of response that you have received their letter and are researching the relavent areas of law. Make sure it is neteral, you don't want to give any impression that you are leaning one way or anouther.
Now go to the local library and do research. A law library is better, but any one will do. Go to the law sections and read how to be your own lawyer books, and all the relavent area of law. This should take many hours, so plan on spending a lot of time reading. Lawyers may be paid to know the law, but they rarely know enough. If you know the law you can either save him some research, or perhaps win the case when you bring up relavent areas that he wouldn't have looked for. Some lawyers are good, some are too lazy to do it right. (Use tact when suggesting things to him though, a lawyer who doesn't like you will not help you)
When I mention a paid lawyer above, not just any lawyer, you want one who knows the internet and internet law. (But you can get recomendataions from a local lawyer)
Of course the publicity angle mentioned above doesn't hurt, students tend to side with the underdog, they may put enough pressure on the university that they back off.
according to Webster: perdue n. "a soldier sent on a dangerous mission".
Take your case to the alumni. You're offering free services to students, right, better than the equivalents offered by the administration? The alumni are bound to take your side. Once that happens the administration will fold faster than you can say "donation money".
If you do have to give it up, try to assign ownership to a student-run organization that is not under university control, or at least with a great deal of autonomy, that can raise a big stink if the administration gets coercive in how the domain is used.
Trademarks are designed to work within specific classes of goods and services. Purdue the school is certainly within Class 41, Education. Since the site in question isn't being used to sell (or "trade", as the case may be) anything, it doesn't really fall into any class. But even if it did, it probably would be a different one, and there would be no conflict.
Furthermore, trademarks DO NOT remove the usage of a word from the language. Just because someone has trademarked the letter Q (Paramount has, by the way) doesn't mean you can't use it. As I understand it, descriptive use of trademarks is okay. You are allowed to call the Boston Marathon "The Boston Marathon" without the permission of the trademark owners -- you don't have to call it "that big long famous race that's held in Boston. That might apply in this case as well.
--
No but see, they are passing laws that say you can't buy a trademarked name with the intent to sell. If he sold it would show intent.. DUH! While a good lawyer could help make sure he doesn't get himself in that sorta trouble.
Besides the constant talk about trying to add new top level domains, I really hope such talk includes placing restrictions on those domains. Things such as
- .net may only be distributed to ISPs and other network service providers.
- .org may only be distributed to non-profit organizations
- .com or
.baz may be only distributed to companies and businesses.
Also, I would suggest that you cannot fight domain names that are outside your company's TLD. For example, sayBut once again, it boils down to the fact that e-commerce has put too much value on the domain name, which 5 years ago, was of very little importance to any net-savvy person. *sigh*.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
first to AC:
/. reading Purdue alumni might a) alert the administrators that they might be alienating potential benefactors through their actions and b) would probably not get ttypo into too much trouble.
Although your point is probably valid, in that I didn't give much evidence of not being a chickenshit, I'm actually not one. Among the organisations and people with whom I've picked fights during a short but belligerent life are: the Inland Revenue (several times), the British Army, the Swiss Banking Commission and the Richardson family (S. London). I've looked into the barrel of a gun and talked my way out of it. As a community leader, I've stood face to face with a man who was later convicted for arranging the murder of three (fellow) drug dealers and told him he wasn't welcome in our estate. This isn't macho-talk, just a record of the things that happen to you if you're articulate, political and more than averagely cocky.
Of all the battles I've been in, however, the ones which left me worst bruised have been fought against educational institutions. You are wrong to assume that they will hold back from being vindictive; they correctly assume that they will get the best of the PR battle. Big universities can flunk you, throw you out, etc, etc and who are the newspapers going to believe? A prestigious institution of learning, or some guy who flunked college and claims that they have a vendetta against him? As soon as you take on the authority which rates people for credibility, you start to develop credibility problems of your own.
Second, to Mawbid:
I've done a lot more things that I regret than you have, for example; both sins of ommission and of commission. I would wholeheartedly agree with you that people should always stand up for what they believe in.
But I'd urge ttypo to consider whether this is really "something he believes in", or just something he wants. If it's the first, fight like a tiger. If it's the second, you need to weigh up the balance of advantages. As far as I can see, it's the second, and the balance of advantages says "give up and move on".
Many things are worth going to the wire for. Political views, loved ones, the truth. Possessions never are. And a domain name looks much more like a possession than anything else to me.
God, I never thought I was going to get so philosophical. I must care about this more than I thought.
jsm
PS On a practical note, I might suggest that a write-in protest by
I remember reading a long while ago on /. about another domain that this happened to. I can't remember off-hand *which* domain it was, but basically someone had chosen to use a domain, and then later down the road a company tried to force him to turn it over. He refused and later it was discovered you can basically fight and win the domain battle if you can prove some stuff.. the ones I remember being:
1) You've had the domain for more than 2 years *AND* the other party never asked you to turn it over (such as a domain that was the same as a company name)
well I can really only remember that one, but as I sit here.. I start to wonder why would the university threaten you? It's just that, a University, hence would be *required* to use .EDU (not .COM) There are other sites out there that use school names.. such as www.psu.org (the school's address: www.psu.edu) and such. I believe Perdue is going overboard on this, and since you do strictly have a disclaimer you are not affliated with the school, they should have no problem. There is a Orthopedics place in my home town (same town with Penn State Univ) that is named "University Orthopedics". Simple way to avoid a lawsuit.. they state in any ad they place (radio, TV, etc) "We are not affliated with The Pennsylvania State University, but we do treat many of their atheletes"
In any case, I'd look more into the deal about having the domain for 2 years... I *know* the posting is here on /. somewhere.. The article would be maybe about 8 months old now, and I'm not sure how long /. keeps postings around, but maybe one of the guys could give you a hand in tracking it down.
I would ask them which of the other 50 registrants of domain names with "Purdue" in the name they're hassling. There are obviously a few below that are probably running much more commerical sites than yours. As for legal advice, I suggest you check with the registrants of: Purdue-law.com (They specialize in patent law!) and Purduelaw.com (no site up). They might have some advice!
CCPURDUE.COM
PURDUEMANAGEDCARE.COM
GREEKSATPURDUE.COM
BIGPURDUEFAN.COM
PURDUEPRIDE.COM
PURDUEAPARTMENTS.COM
PURDUEGEAR.COM
GO2PURDUE.COM
PURDUEALUMNICLUB.COM
PURDUETALK.COM
PURDUERULES.COM
PURDUETEAMLINK.COM
PURDUECATALOG.COM
PURDUEBOOKSTORE.COM
GOPURDUE.COM
PURDUEPRONET.COM
PURDUEMAIL.COM
PURDUEBOILERMAKERS.COM
PURDUEONLINE.COM
PURDUELAW.COM
PURDUEEFCU.COM
PURDUEBIOPHARMA.COM
HPURDUE.COM
PURDUEFAN.COM
PURDUEDATING.COM
E-PURDUE.COM
PURDUEJOBS.COM
PAULPURDUE.COM
PURDUEPHARMA.COM
PURDUE-LAW.COM
PURDUE-FEDERICK.COM
PURDUEFREDERICK.COM
PURDUEFREDRICK.COM
PURDUESPIRIT.COM
PURDUEPEOPLE.COM
PURDUE.COM
PURDUESPORTS.COM
PURDUEU.COM
MRPURDUE.COM
PURDUENET.COM
PURDUEBOOKS.COM
PURDUEGRAD.COM
PURDUEHOUSING.COM
PURDUEUNIVERSITY.COM
JOHNPURDUECLUB.COM
PURDUEFUND.COM
PURDUECOOPERATIVES.COM
PURDUEPETE.COM
PURDUEALUMNI.COM
PURDUEBASKETBALL.COM
PURDUESOURCE.COM
I'm a lawyer and (worse?) a law professor, so I have to start with disclaimers: this isn't legal advice, consult a lawyer who is familiar with the facts of your situation, etc. etc. YMMV. Consult the other disclaimers at once, etc. etc..
I should also note that what follows is based on the law at the time the letter was written (i.e. I am not taking account of the cybersquatting bill, which AFAIK has not actually passed both houses yet although I gather it's almost a foregone conclusion).
Furthermore, trademark law varies some (but only some) from country to country. I know much more about US law than I do about other countries. What I do know about European trademark law, however, suggests that the position of a domain name registrant viz a viz a brick & mortar trademark holder is a little less favorable in, say, the Netherlands, than it would be in the US because the distinction between commercial/non-commercial uses is less strong, and because mere registration may qualify as "use" of a trademark or some other type of infringing activity. What follows is primarily geared to the US domain name registrant.
As a general rule, trademark law divides the universe of trademarks into two families: a fairly small set of "famous" marks (think "CocaCola (tm)" and everything else. In the US the "famous" marks (and, weirdly, maybe some non-famous marks) are protected by relatively new federal anti-dilution statute and in many but not all states by (older) state anti-dilution laws which do vary. All trademarks, whether famous or not, are also protected against "confusion" and "tarnishment" (and other stuff we'll ignore for now). Tarnishment prosecutions are rare, but the law protects against the association of a trademarked name with something really bad (porn or drugs), modulo first amendment concerns (but then beware libel law). Running a porn site, even a free one, might well be considered tarnishment if the site's name was easily confused with a trademarked name.
The critical points to understand, as a first approximation to the law only, are these:
- your use is purely non-commercial (you are not even selling T-shirts), and
- you have never offered to sell the domain name to anyone for anything, and
- you are not guilty of tarnishment
then your legal position is very strong.Note also that all new registrations and all re-registrations in .com, .org and .net will henceforth be subject to ICANN's new take-it-or-leave-it dispute policies at the option of a complainant with a trademark seeking to wrest a domain name from a non-trademark holder.
So, don't panic. Please keep in mind that the new cybersquatting bill may obsolete some of the above. I understand the bill was amended last week and I have not had a chance to look at the latest text, which is why I'm not discussing it.
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
Domain name squatting was once regarded as completely appropriate...
- Who says that ttyp0 is cybersquatting? According to his article, the website is offering services of a valid nature to Purdue students.
- He's not attempting to sell the domain name and make money on it, and finally,
- I disagree that domain name squatting was ever regarded as completely appropriate, even "four to five years ago or something like that"
My point being, that cybersquatting is not anything remotely like what is going on here.The second part of your post implies that anything to do with the word Compaq (for example) is trademarked, which may or may not be true. However, ttyp0 checked, and clearly states not only that "I found that Purdue had only two names trademarked, which are "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers"." but also that "I clearly state that we are not affiliated with Purdue University."So on this point, again, the website owner has made efforts to completely obey the law.
This leads to my final dissection of your post, in which you say "...something about trademark law says that if you don't protect your trademark, you lose the right to it, i.e. you can't successfully sue people later on that use it." That is correct. Except that the name Purdue isn't trademarked, just "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers. Which means that your final point ("They can sue you even if you registered it "first", because it was illegal of you to register and use their name in the first place.") doesn't hold up to reality.
The bottom line is, if the University wanted the word "Purdue" trademarked, they should have done it years ago. Since they didn't, they don't have the legal right to challenge PURDUEONLINE.COM's right to exist.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
First and foremost, the thing you need to do is find a lawyer, find a lawyer, find a lawyer. I'm not one. 99.9% of the people who post on Slashdot on /. are not one either. Don't take our advice, except in that one important respect.
How to find a lawyer? There's a lawyer directory called Martindale-Hubbell, which you can find at most any library. They also have a website, but I don't know if that actually contains the full content of the book or just those people who've added an online listing.
This book lists not only the lawyers and their types of practices, but also certain important statistics that help you decide how good they are. Find a lawyer and talk to them. You may or may not have a case, but Slashdotters are not the ones to tell you that.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The Fox Network soon saw upset that xfiles.com existed and wanted the domain name.
The webmaster, whom I worked under, fought hard, and he retold his story Here.
The eventual downfall came when Fox threatened to litigate in expensive lawsuits. My boss had the legal right, but the big money of FOX could muscle his middle class income into poverty with just one legal battle.
So we caved, and created Chatphiles.com instead.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
Hey Brent,
I'm a CS '97 grad from Purdue (and I'm guessing we know each other, but I digress) and I recall this type of thing being the subject of a couple talks I heard when I was there.
The first one that comes to mind is when Dr. Comer talked to our 413 class. One of the students asked what he thought about someone registering comer.com , and he totally blew it off, saying that when they developed DNS, they never expected people would just go out registering everything, so that's just the way it goes. I know Dr. Comer can be a hard person to find, but (especially if you're a CS student) if you can get him to put in a nice word for you with the administration, saying that that's just the way the system (in part developed by Purdue) was designed to work, it would probably be a big boon for your case. Of course there are deeper political issues with doing that: I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
The second source you'll want to check out is University Cleaners. I heard the owner (who's like a PU ME class of '56 or something) give a talk at a leadership conference. Seems that when he started University Cleaners 30 or 40 years ago, he got the same kind of letter from the University, saying how he had to change the name because people were getting the impression that his business was owned or something by Purdue University, which we all know is a bunch of bunk. Anyway, he made a big case for himself, presented it to Purdue, and they dropped the issue. So look him up and see if he has any pointers for you.
Of course, a bunch of letters from Alums can't hurt. I'd be happy to participate. Just let me know where to send it if you organize such an effort.
Hope this helps!
-"Zow"
#define GETALAWYER
#include
when it comes down to it, this is going to have to be made as a rational business decision on your part.
You need to do two things: (1) Assess the value (aesthetically, commercially or otherwise) to you of keeping the domain name; and (2) Assess the merits of Purdue's claims.
This much is clear, you cannot answer the latter question effectively without getting good advice from a competent lawyer, and in this case an expert on the subject will be far more efficient than a low-end techno-newbie, even at one-third the rate.
I can assure that no contributor to slashdot, lawyer or non-laywer can give you sound advice based solely upon the information provided, so should you decide to act upon any advice you receive here, be assured you will get in value precisely what you paid for the advice. Might as well flip a coin.
But if you do complete those analyses, you may discover that the matter can be dismissed with a letter, or even if it cannot be, that it would be worthwhile to fight (or try to outstare the other side) with respect to a genuine lawsuit. From this information, you can actually plan and execute a strategy, rather than merely react to the letter.
For your own good, Its probably best not to respond to the letter until you have obtained advice of competent counsel, except perhaps to advise the other side that you will communicate with them after you have obtained and received advice of counsel.