Is it decorous to refer to mainstays (people recurring in a legal document) by abbreviations? Presume that these mainstays (even if their names are short) can all be named publicly. I fancy referring to them only with my abbreviations that I introduce on the first page, to save space and avoid typos, like for long surnames. E.g., I'd state (on the first page), before solely using thereafter, my abbreviations of the 4 counterparties (presume this) as: JK for Leoš Janáček (not LJ; this already means Lord Justice of Appeal), ZK for Zoltán Kodály, GK for György Kurtág, and BM for Bohuslav Martinů.
No. In formal writing, you refer to people by name. After you use their full name you can just use their last name in future references, but you don't refer to them by their initials. Even in informal writing, you normally don't use initials unless the person is commonly known by their initials (e.g. JFK) or unless you're using shorthand.
There is already any number of other pages that are named kleinanzeigen, just with different top level domains (probably sprung into existence after the plan for the renaming became public). But if you are a Website operating in Germany that owns the kleinanzeigen.de domain, that probably does not worry you too much (you could probably fight others over the use of the word for a specific purpose such as a classifieds website, because sometimes specific uses might be protected; but that would be an uphill battle, since as pointed out the name is the literal description of the business model). What might worry you is that somebody is tricked into confusing kleinanzeigen.eu or kleinanzeigen.biz with your valuable property. The way to avoid that is to register a &quot;Wort-Bild-Marke&quot;, a combination of your name with one or more distinctive graphic elements. You will notice that the &quot;kleinanzeigen&quot; name on the website is rendered in a specific font and is preceded by what on closer inspection turns out to be a stylized letter &quot;k&quot;. That is something that can be protected by law. Nobody else is allowed to be too close to that design, so that minimizes the danger that visitors confuse a competitor's page with the &quot;original&quot; kleinanzeigen page. Since the question alludes to eBay's business, kleinanzeigen is no longer a part of eBay - for some three years now they belong to Adevinta, a Norwegian conglomerate that runs classified portals in various countries. So keeping &quot;ebay&quot; in their name was not really an option (and all alternatives to &quot;kleinanzeigen&quot; were probably worse).
Yes. There is no requirement that a company name be accurately descriptive. One could call such a company &quot;Horror and Fury Brewing&quot; if one chose to, or &quot;Joe's Eats&quot;. Such a name might well reduce book sales, but there is no law against poor business decisions. As long as the name does not violate any existing trademarks, it should be OK unless there is some specific law in the local jurisdiction that regulates company names, which seems unlikely.
There is no requirement to name the parties to a contract I just bought a cup of coffee. I did not give my name to the other party to that contract and while I know the name of the shop, I do not actually know the legal entity I contracted with. Nevertheless, we have a binding contract and, for example, if that coffee gave me food poisoning, I would have legal recourse under that contract. Similarly, there is no difficulty signing a contract under a pseudonym - it still creates a legally binding relationship. The practical difficulties While there is no legal problem, there is an evidentiary one - if someone enters a contract and later disclaims doing so, how do you prove that they did? Or vice-versa, if someone alleges that it was you that entered the contract, how do you prove that you didn’t. What you need is some way of definitively but anonymously tying the person to the contract. I can think of lots - a fingerprint, DNA, public key cryptography, a trusted third-party intermediary to name just a few. This is essentially a technical problem rather than a legal one.
Your issue is trademark, not copyright. If these other guys use their mark (product name) in commerce but did not register it, they have an unregistered trademark which you could be infringing. Between two users of the same trademark, the first to use in commerce wins. (There is a territorial component but with the Internet, meh.) If the trademark is registered that gives them a presumption of validity. Trademark infringement is concerned with consumer confusion. If someone uses someone else's trademark in a way that confuses consumers as to the origin of the goods, that's a problem. What this means is that if I make tires with the name Sportie and someone else makes soap also with that name Sportie there is not a high likelihood of confusion. Likewise a hotel in Washington called Runner's Cove probably doesn't infringe a shoe store in Florida with the same name. Fantasy games and fantasy books sold over the Internet? Sounds like a potential problem that you might want to clear up before the second book.
While German law indeed requires providing correct contact information it does not require the recipient to answer queries. It is there so that you can submit legal notifications. In your case I wouldn't be so sure that the information is not correct. However, even if the contact information is incorrect, there is not much you can do about it. This is reserved to the following groups by § 8 Abs. 3 UWG: every competitor; associations with legal personality which exist for the promotion of commercial or of independent professional interests, so far as a considerable number of entrepreneurs belong thereto, and which distribute goods or services of the same or similar type on the same market, provided such associations are actually in a position, particularly in terms of their personnel, material and financial resources, to pursue the tasks, under their memoranda of association, of promoting commercial or independent professional interests, and so far as the contravention affects the interests of their members; qualified entities that prove that they are entered on the list of qualified entities pursuant to section 4 of the Injunctions Act or on the list of the Commission of the European Communities pursuant to Article 4 of Directive 98/27/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 1998 on injunctions for the protection of consumer interests (OJ Number L 166 page 51); Chambers of Industry and Commerce or Craft Chambers. Unless you are a competitor you are out of luck. The hoster or other providers can't do anything and don't need to, as they are not required to check legality of their user's websites. It doesn't really matter where you are by the way for these laws.
You need to do something, if you don't like all-caps. This is a response to the requirement to be "conspicuous", as required under UCC 2-316, viz. to exclude or modify the implied warranty of merchantability or any part of it the language must mention merchantability and in case of a writing must be conspicuous, and to exclude or modify any implied warranty of fitness the exclusion must be by a writing and conspicuous. YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO SHOUT since under UCC 1-201 "conspicuous" means so written, displayed, or presented that a reasonable person against which it is to operate ought to have noticed it. Whether a term is "conspicuous" or not is a decision for the court. Conspicuous terms include the following: (A) a heading in capitals equal to or greater in size than the surrounding text, or in contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same or lesser size; and (B) language in the body of a record or display in larger type than the surrounding text, or in contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same size, or set off from surrounding text of the same size by symbols or other marks that call attention to the language There is a relevant case, American General Finance, Inc. v. Bassett, 285 F.3d 882, which deals with a "clear and conspicious" requirement in another context, which "sees no reason to depart" from the UCC understanding.
There is no internationally-enforceable mechanism regarding how other people call something, or what alphabet can be uses to write a word. I can legally call that country between Bangladesh and Thailand "Burma" or "Myanmar", I can call Україна Ukraine, The Ukraine, or Ukrainia (the latter seems to be old-fashioned, but it's still legal). As a diplomatic matter, the US government seems to have settled on certain designations so that it uses the version "Myanmar" for official purposes although it includes "(Burma)" in popular communications (State Department travel advisories). If it wanted to, the US could call The Republic of North Macedonia by the name "Macedonia", though there would be political protests. The EU, NATO, UN etc. can likewise set its own rules regarding names of countries. There are many additional complications in the case of countries that are not universally / widely recognized, such as Trasnistria and the Republic of Somaliland. If the president of the Republic of Somaliland sought to address the UN, his problem would not be what people would call his country, it is that the Republic of Somaliland is not "recognized" by the UN (it has no official status), or anyone else. The question of "sameness" of language is a prominent feature of nationalist movements. Claims are made that Flemish and Dutch are "the same" or "different", likewise Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin; Dari, Farsi and Tajik. Thus there is no real chance of litigating the matter of whether Moldovan and Romanian are the "same language" and which name should be used. But if the EU parliament wants to, it could rule that the language of Moldova is to be called "Romanian", or "Moldovan".