u/pleashalpme

Yes

HA! You're absolutely right, that's a good point.

let me know if you ever find out haha

i'm not really sure lol

PM'd

Guess I can do that. You want to use PayPal or something else?

I'll do rusty lake paradise. Apparently I already have the other two oops

But how would I even know if I need to go before a judge? My attorney has been receiving all the letters and notices from the USPTO/party of opposition for the past year or so.

I feel like the opposition could have already been filled and I wouldn't even know about it! What can I do about that?

This is probably not the best move, however.

Right, this would show just how disorganized my legal defense is...

I would suggest you look said attorney up and see if there is any news about them.

Found nothing. I even contacted their receptionist/helper/intern whoever, and they haven't gotten back to me either.

The money that vanished with your missing attorney should be considered spent

As far as I'm concerned, he did absolutely nothing after he received the payment. We had an agreement as to exactly what those funds would be put towards to. I can prove those things were not fulfilled whatsoever. But I'm not planning to go out and do a charge-back right now anyway.

Any idea how I will be notified when the opposition is filed? If everything goes to my former attorneys office, I won't even know about it! How can I update the address on my trademark page on the USPTO site? Is it easy/free to do online?

If they do file then you're going to want to find a new attorney

I have been struggling to do this since my last post here. Literally zero attorneys have agreed to help me because I didn't file the trademark with them, or because I can't provide enough documentation on my case. A couple other agreed, but quoted a minimum of 40k upfront.... I'm still trying to get over the shock of having to defend my trademark which I used and registered first, just because another company feel like using it in the future too.

Do you think you could provide me with a resource as to how I can familiarize myself with the trademark opposition process? I may just have to defend against the company myself. But I have no idea what the legal process is, I should at least be prepared in this regard.

Wait until you hit the 5yr mark.

Hey, whatever works. Just make it's as tight as possible. Components are extremely fragile to even minute vibrations, especially hard drives. Good thing you have everything backed up though.

What about putting some of your more fragile stuff in one of those metal lunchboxes? I've done that with hard drives and had good results. Still wouldn't hurt to pad the inside and tape it shut

There are actually proposals... Sometimes I wonder how people manage to get any developers on upwork.

Translation: Moscow

Do you have any hard case luggage? It really does add significant protection. But if you have an especially expensive GPU, consider taking it in your carry-on in a smaller box or wrapped in bubble wrap.

Definitely heard the 1st movement of the Moonlight Sonata!

I think it's very unlikely, because from my understanding, they plan to sell merch once their TV series is released, and it is still in production (if it's even begun at all).

How do we, as a small business, prove that we've been using this mark longer than they have? I feel like they have dirty tricks up their sleeves and can just claim to have been using it since 20xx, making sure to undercut our date of use.

A lot of our transactions are done online now. But in the early days when we sold a shirt, it would just say "merchandise sale/tshirt sale" (All of our merchandise has our Trademark on it though). How would we prove we used our Trademark like this?? Can't exactly go back 9 years and ask the customer to confirm buying one... and I bet the court will laugh if we used that as proof of use anyway. This is what worries me most. I feel our records will be inadequate.

Is there anything specific the Trademark court will be looking for so I know which records I should start searching through?

In your opinion, what does it take to "win" a case like this? By that I mean, what kind of stuff would we need to provide in court? We've been selling merch for about a decade, which I assume predates this company's use of our mark. Is that sufficient enough to win a case? I have a feeling it goes much deeper than that.

Is there a reason our attorney was concerned about the legal representation the opposing party has? What could they possible argue that causes them to win a case if we registered and were using the mark before they did?

When I meant was that if they believe they are going to get the trademark anyway, why would they want to pay you money for it?

I was hoping because paying for the mark would be cheaper and less time consuming for them than it would be to fight us over it, and there's still a risk they won't win. I'm really against signing anything over to anyone for free. No one would ever do that for us if we asked, and they're not even asking nicely.

I can't speak to his diligence or anything else, but clearly he knows more about your case than anyone on reddit can.

Actually, this is why I came to reddit. I'm not saying he's a bad lawyer, but I feel like we're not his #1 customers and he doesn't want to spend any more time on our case than absolutely necessary. And he said it was impossible to ask for compensation/licensing (but I may have misunderstood him) because as you guys have stated, it does in fact seem like a possibility assuming we can come to an agreement with the other party.

It seems like he MIGHT be viewing this as a choice between:

Getting something, just not the coveted 25, or...

Getting nothing at all.

That's my other question. The Production company isn't asking for the right to sell socks, shoes, gloves, etc. They just want T-shirts, hats and hoodies. If they oppose us and we can't afford to fight back, do we lose everything in class 25, or just the items that they want?

My other reference was to this which may not be an option due to your size and profitability, but it's good to know that it exists.

I've heard of that but have no idea how it works. How do you check if you qualify for a service like that? Our business income is quite low, but just enough to maintain our services in the other 3 classes not in opposition.

I browsed the Florida Bar website, but I don't see any "litigation" option. Sorry about my confusion, just trying to get something done asap.

What do you suggest we try to do in this case? We're still pretty new to all this legal trademark stuff, so it's a bit confusing.

Being able to continue selling merchandise without risk of being sued is #1 priority.

Edit: It's not really a logo, but a "word mark". Not sure how that changes things.

I asked him about #3 and #4, and he said "It doesn't work like that" and "It will be very, very expensive, $$,$$$ expensive".

But it sounds like you will eventually win if you can battle it out?

That's what I thought too, but our attorney is saying the costs of going into a legal battle will likely outweigh any profit we'll make from class 25 in the next 2-3 years.

(3.) They wouldn't have any incentive to pay you if they have obtained the mark.

Right, so they pay us $__ and then we sign the agreement and they get the trademark transferred over to them. At least this way we'd have enough funds to operate for the foreseeable future, without needing to rely on merch sales.

No I haven't seen that article... doesn't look promising. But as the case with the Caterpillar and Cat & Cloud trademark infringement example illustrates, the perceived similarity can be subjective. And it can lead to a costly legal proceeding, which can put a small business out of business. this is what we're afraid of.

Essentially;

We give up the mark and lose our business since now we don't have income to fund our services.

or

We fight them and we win, but we still lose our business because we will be bankrupt after the legal fees.

I see that in the case you linked, they started a go----dme. I was thinking about that, but I highly doubt that we'd be able to raise enough to fight them over this. Although slowly expanding, we still serve a fairly small community and don't have an enormous social media following or anything that we could use to bring attention to our situation.

Attorney is a little bit difficult to communicate with, but he has not suggested anything of financing. I feel like he's actually leaning towards just signing everything over... clearly this is not what we want after putting so much time and effort into this mark.

We filed for the trademark 6 months before the other company did.

So it's impossible to have the trademark co-owned under different companies/names? Can we both really not sell t-shirts at the same time without killing each other?

Our merch sales kind of relies on that exact working. Adding or removing anything and the merch is worth nothing.