Can your business have the same initials as a major corporation? By coincidence, if my company was “Internal brilliance method”(I just made that up) could IBM(international business machines) sue me over trademark infringement? In different industries different look, would they have a solid case?
No. A trademark is specific to an industry or type of products or services. And, while it is virtually impossible to get a new trade name with a three letter acronym because almost all of them are taken, three words that start with the same letters as a three letter acronym is not infringement on the acronym. You might very well be infringing if you used &quot;I.B.M.&quot; to sell computer equipment. But, &quot;Internal brilliance method&quot;, spelled out, would not infringe I.B.M., even in the computer equipment industry, and &quot;I.B.M.&quot; in the food service industry, for example, would not be trademark infringement on the International Business Machines&quot; trademark of &quot;I.B.M.&quot; for good and services of the type that it offers.
Q1 and Q2 are definitely not copyright violations. Copyright protects original expression. Your questions are yours; the only things you are using are the names, and copyright doesn't cover them on their own. The quotation in Q3 might conceivably come under copyright. However in practice it is very likely to be fair use (unfortunately nothing is definitely fair use until a court rules on it, but I can't imagine a short quotation in a quiz being an issue).
The answer to the question "can so-and-so sue me?" is almost always "yes", regardless of context. Such a suit might be baseless, and it might get settled in your favor, but you still have to spend the time and money to defend yourself. This can be disastrous for a start-up that's trying to get off the ground, and it's how patent trolls make their money. (I'm not accusing SnapChat of engaging in such tactics as a rule, of course; I'm just pointing out that the legal system does allow for them.) Whether or not you are likely to be sued is a separate question, and one that can really only be effectively addressed by a trademark attorney with full knowledge of the particularities of your situation.
Registered Trade Marks aren't the only form of trade mark protection. You also have the law of unregistered trade marks. Basically (and this is an over-simplification), it works like this: a business starts using a trade mark for a specified product: beard comb. Let's say that they don't even register a trade mark. they start selling load and loads (thinks 100s of thousands of $ or £ worth) they become well-known in that market segment. They accrue "goodwill" in the (unregistered) trade mark. That trade mark is protectable in law. That's a summary of the law of passing off aka the law of unregistered trade marks. So, if the new manufacturer is still manufacturing them in the country that you want to sell them in, you'll probably have a problem. This assumes that that country has an equivalent of the law of passing off. The tip then has to be - check to see if the manufacturer is still selling them. If you think it's a good business opportunity and worth a small amount of risk capital - a few hundred $ or £, file the trade mark application is see if anyone does anything about it. You can always withdraw it and avoid a dispute. You might also do a search for registered design rights. They protect the shape of the products (not what it's called - which is what a trade mark does).
You cannot use a trademark in a way that may cause confusion that your goods and services are associated with or endorsed by the trade marked goods and services. If you are clear that they are not then you shouldn't have any problems on that front. You also cannot defame the brand: that is make derogatory comments that are not true. On a practical note, when Pepsi (for example) sends you a cease &amp; desist notice, what are you going to do? They can go to the petty cash tin for $2 million to make your life a legal hell for 18-36 months: how much do you have to defend your rights?
I am not knowledgeable about UK law, but since almost everywhere in the U.S. employment is at-will by default, in all three scenarios Company B is entitled to terminate the employee very easily. The assumption that the employee was accurately found guilty of harassment elsewhere precludes more interesting analyses where matters such as defamation and public policy are involved. If the contract between the employee and Company B establishes that termination will be for good cause, the employee has only a mild chance of not being terminated for what he did in Company A. However, I say "mild chance" because in most cases Company B can reasonably argue that it seeks to protect its other employees and/or customers from the possibility that the employee's misconduct may occur in the current workplace. A very detailed analysis of the factual circumstances might be required for discerning whether Company B's decision to terminate the employee is merited. Additionally, in cases where The Employee is a publicly visible figure and a figure of authority having a management role there could be a concern that the employee's misconduct elsewhere may harm the image of Company B.
Attribution is not a legal requirement If company A owns IP (copyright and trademarks in this case), they can licence it to company N on whatever terms are mutually acceptable. They may require company N to attribute their IP or they may not.
On what grounds would you sue? Contract Well, I think that you would struggle to find the necessary elements (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?) In particular, you would struggle to prove that there was intention to create legal relations on their part and possibly on yours. Are you able to identify in your "back &amp; forth" a clear, unequivocal offer and acceptance? Without knowing the details of the "back &amp; forth": I was hoping that someone at $organization might be willing to write an article explaining what you do, the history of the organization and how it works appears on the face of it to be a request for a gift; not an offer to treat. Promissory Estoppel If you don't have a contract then it is possible (IMO unlikely) that they induced you by your actions to commit resources (your time in writing) in anticipation of a reward (them publishing what you wrote). To be estopped they would have to have known that you were writing the article in the expectation that it would have your organisation's name in it, that they did not intend for that to happen and that they allowed you to invest those resources notwithstanding. If you can prove all of that then you can require them to do what they promised. The big difficulty I see in this is did you tell them that a) you were writing the article, b) it would have your name in it and c) you expected it to be published in that form. Copyright If they publish the work or a derivative work without your permission you can sue for breach of copyright. As it stands, they probably have an implied licence to publish and you would need to explicitly revoke that. Options There are two reasons to go to court: Money Principle If you are going to court for money then this is at best a risky investment and at worst a gamble: balance your risk and reward carefully. If you are going to court for a principle then I simultaneously admire your principles and think you're an idiot. Make a deal Explain that the reason that you wrote the article was a) to support their fine publication and the fantastic work it does (even if you don't) and b) to garner good publicity for your organisation. You understand and admire their strong editorial stance (especially if you don't) but the article involved a considerable amount of work and could they see their way clear to give you a significant discount (~80%) on a full page ad facing the article.