What to do if you are sued for company name that resemble an existing company name in the UK? I've been sued by Oracle for company name under the provisions of section 69(0) of the Companies Act 2006 (the Act) in The Company Names tribunal in the UK. My company name is JAVASCRIPT CONSULTING LTD. Tribunal decision: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/company-names-tribunal-decision-javascript-consulting-ltd/decision-on-javascript-consulting-ltd Did anyone had similar issues? How could I resolve this situation? I would be grateful for any advice.
History of the case Javascript is a trademark of Oracle since 1996/1999. Anything that can cause confusion of origin or endorsement is thus infringing on the trademark of Oracle. A company explicitly named after a product of another implies to be endorsed, so Oracle sued that company under S69(1) of the Companies Act 2006 in November 2019. The company did not respond to any level of the lawsuit, which meant they did not contest any arguments - the even refused to take the mail1. It was their duty to show, that they fulfilled one of the provisions in Section 69(4), which could grandfather their name. As a result, the complaint was upheld as a matter of law (last sentence of S69(4)), Section 69(5) did not come up to the test as there was no response. The tribunal ordered the Company to need to rename and pay the fees. 1 - Regarding the keywords used by Royal Mail: &quot;Not called for&quot; is applied to mails that would not fit into a letterbox and nobody was available to sign for them. A postcard to get redelivery arranged or pick it up at the post station is deposited instead. If not called for within a specified timeframe, it is returned to the sender. &quot;refused&quot; is applied to mail that is explicitly denied at the door by the receiver and then returned to the sender. Next steps: GET A LAWYER! Whether this situation is salvageable is very much dependant on the specifics we don't know. It is a question for the lawyer employed by the respondent as the respondent needs proper legal advice from a licensed professional now. Respondent might also want to familiarize themselves with the rules of the Company Name Tribunal and if there is an appeals process available so they can ask their lawyer for more specific advice about the situation. They should be honest to their lawyer and tell them the whole situation.
Being or not being open source makes fairly little difference in trademark law. If a commercial firm (Yoyodyne, say) had used the name &quot;Portable Network Graphics&quot; and the abbreviation &quot;PNG&quot; in trade, and taken such further steps as would be needed to protect it in the relevant countries, that firm would have a protectable trademark. Note that in some countries, a trademark must be registered to have any protection at all (much of the EU follows this rule). In others, use in commerce can offer some protection even without registration (the US follows this rule). Had this happened (in an alternate reality) Yoyodyne could have sent a cease and desist letter when open source developers started using the mark. If the devs did not cease, Yoyodyne might have obtained an injunction, or damages for trademark infringement, or both. They could also have issued a takedown notie to the site hosting the project. But had Yoyodyne failed to defend the mark effectively and allowed it to become generic, Yoyodyne might have lost all rights to it. Also, had Yoyodyne ceased to use it in trade for a significant period, they might have lost rights. This is a place where the different laws in different countries might lead to different results. Note that &quot;Portable Network Graphics&quot; is rather descriptive, and not particularly distinctive. Descriptive marks, like &quot;Tasty Pizza&quot; generally get weaker protection, while more distinctive marks, such as &quot;LuAnn's Tastee Pizza&quot; are more strongly protected, in general. Again this depends on the country, and the specific facts. In general the first to use, or to register a mark, gets the rights. When one entity is the first to use, but a different one is first to register, things can get confusing, and results will be different in different countries. Note that a Cease and Desist letter is not a legal requirement. It is a threat of possible future legal action, and often an offer to avoid such action if the recipient does as the sender requests. The recipient can comply with the letter, wait for court action, or try to make some sort of compromise deal. Open source projects, as other answers suggest, often choose to comply.
Given the following: We know the name of the plaintiff, The name is likely to be unique so that there won't be too many cases involving a different party with the same name, and The plaintiff is a company so it is not likely to have been involved in an overwhelming number of cases (as opposed to e.g. the IRS); The approach I would use would be to search a legal case database such as Westlaw for all cases where Hamilton Watch Company is a party, and review the abstract for each case that I find. In this case we also have a relatively rare keyword, &quot;pulsar&quot; so we can narrow down the results by putting that in the search as well. However there are several caveats: You will only find cases which went far enough that the court made a decision. Your quote says &quot;I'm told that in the United States the watch company tried suing the radio astronomers for use of the name&quot;. That sounds like pretty unreliable third hand information. It's quite possible that they merely sent a cease and desist letter and that got reinterpreted as &quot;tried suing&quot; by the time it was said by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Even if they did sue, the majority of cases are settled out of court without ever seeing trial, which means you are unlikely to find any formal record of it and your best hope may be media articles if it was high profile enough. Large companies often have complex corporate structures involving parents and subsidiaries so the suing party's name may not actually be what you think it is. That certainly seems to be the case here, so you may have to start searching for other company names within the group. Not all cases are reported in which case you are less likely to find them. My jurisdiction is england-and-wales but I surprised myself by discovering that my Westlaw access allows me to login to the US version as well. I found no relevant cases for any of the following searches (based on various companies that have been part of the same group as Hamilton Watch Co over the years): &quot;hamilton&quot; in the party name and &quot;pulsar&quot; in the text. &quot;buren&quot; in the party name and &quot;pulsar&quot; in the text. &quot;swatch&quot; in the party name and &quot;pulsar&quot; in the text. &quot;SSIH&quot; in the party name and &quot;pulsar&quot; in the text. &quot;HMW&quot; in the party name and &quot;pulsar&quot; in the text. The only vaguely related thing I found was when I searched for &quot;watch&quot; as the party name and found this case involving a &quot;pulsar&quot; trademark for watches owned by Seiko Kabushiki Kaisha. It has nothing to do with the purported facts in your question though.
Do I need to create an LLC if I already own the domain? No. Can someone legally create an LLC with the same name as my domain? Yes. Just trying to understand what the difference is between an LLC and a business An LLC, a &quot;limited liability company,&quot; is a kind of legal entity that has a separate identity from the members of the LLC. The members' liability is limited with respect to the company's liability, hence the name. A business is a commercial activity. The two concepts are independent. A person can have a business without forming a corporation, or indeed many businesses. A single corporation can also have many businesses. Back to the question about someone forming an LLC using your domain name, this raises the issue of trademark protection. In the US, at least, you can't register a trademark unless it is &quot;in use in commerce&quot; (15 USC 1051(a)(3)(C)), which means explicitly that you cannot use the mark &quot;merely to reserve a right in&quot; it (15 USC 1127). But there are many subtleties of trademark protection that are widely misunderstood by most people, so if you anticipate wanting trademark protection for a name, you will probably want to learn about how trademark protection works and likely talk to a trademark lawyer.
Summary from comments. (Hat tip @jqning) Daniel Nathan Ballard writes here: [It] is not only improper it is UNLAWFUL and may result in serious repercussions... Such a misuse may constitute false advertising... (“It is no doubt true” that affixing the ‘Trade Mark Registered U.S. Patent Office” notice on goods that are not protected by a federally registered trademark creates “a prima facie case of fraud against the public… .”). ... Such use is also a form of “unclean hands” that can bar the user’s registration of the mark. ... Such a use may also bar the maintenance of an infringement case. ... And the fraudulent use of the trademark registration symbol DOES provide other marketplace participants with standing to oppose the user’s registration of the mark. http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/use-of---symbol-but-not-federally-registered-1125746.html
When the question is "Can I be sued for..." there can't ever be a really useful answer, because anyone can be sued for just about anything. The suit may be tossed as pointless early in the process, but it can be filed. That said, could there be a valid ground of suit against a developer for creating a scraper? Possibly. Scraping a site could be against the site's TOS. It could be largely a way of committing copyright infringement. It could be unlawful in some other way. For most sites, scraping is not unlawful. Google does it all the time. If there is no legitimate use for the scraper, or very nearly none, so that any user is likely to be acting maliciously and unlawfully, and if the developer knows this, or any reasonable developer should know this, then the developer could possibly be found liable for the illegitimate actions of those who use the scarper. If there is a legit use for the scraper, or the developer would plausibly think that there is, then such development is not illegal, and a successful suit against the developer is unlikely.
Yes, you did something wrong; you used both the university's trade mark and copyright without their permission. I don't know the law in India, however, if it is similar to Australia it is unlikely that the police will be interested in doing anything about it. While it is technically a crime, criminal prosecution is usually reserved for egregious breaches on a for profit basis. I suggest you apologise and agree to stop distributing your app.
Under U.S. law, this is only actionable is you make this statement knowing that it would not "support the continued creation of X" and that instead, you had already completely abandoned that product and you were, for example, planning to change lines of work and become a lumberjack instead. Even in that case, common law fraud is hard to show, because you would need to show how that statement which related to how the profits will be used, rather than what you are actually receiving, could cause you damages in that narrow transaction. But, many states have deceptive trade practices acts that protect consumers by allowing the attorney general, local prosecutor, or a private individual or class of plaintiffs to sue if representations such as these are made when they are known to be false. Typically, these lawsuits provide for minimum statutory damages, attorneys' fees award, and when cases are brought by a public official, injunctive relief (ordering the advertising with that pitch to cease) are authorized. For example, saying this when it is false would be actionable in California and Colorado. A fairly common fact pattern is that someone will sell stuff at an above market price saying that "profits will help me pay for my cancer treatments" when in fact the person doesn't have cancer. This could even constitute criminal wire and mail fraud, for example. Sometimes, competitors can also sue you under the Lanham Act (which primarily governs federal trademarks), for false advertising about something that could unfairly undermine their sales if what you are saying isn't true and is causing their sales to drop. On the other hand, if you sincerely believe that what you are saying is true when you say it, and your belief is not so unreasonable that no reasonable person could believe that under the circumstances, then what you are saying is legal. Usually this is true, and if it is, ultimately, you will be fine. Although nothing can prevent you from being sued on a non-meritorious basis. In between are cases where this is true (you will be supported, but perhaps only get 5% of the profits while the rest are garnished for a lawsuit), but your statements were still misleading at the time you made them and you knew it. Those cases get resolved on a case by case basis. Outside U.S. law, your mileage may vary. Legal regulation of commercial speech varies significantly from one country to another. These statements might not be O.K. for example in a Communist regime on the Chinese or Korean model.