In the event of an alleged copyright infringement, the DCMA explicitly provides a dispute process, wherein a take-down can be halted by the target until/unless the complainant obtains a court order.<p>In contrast, if your Heroku-hosted website makes provably fair-use reference to another firm's trademark (such as a side-by-side factual feature comparison) yet a trademark bully alleges infringement, Heroku offers NO certain process to forestall a take-down other than you removing the allegedly infringing content.<p>Heroku's response to any infringment claim is: "Please remove the content and/or above-referenced link(s) within 24 hours or else we will have no other choice but to disable your application"<p>Heroku COULD offer a dispute process (see EFF link below). But according to the person whose title is "Trademark Counsel | Salesforce" the best they offer customers is a "may be":<p>"... we typically must require the customer to remove the allegedly infringing material within an expeditious time frame... you are free to reach out to us to explain the situation, but in most cases, our ability to provide an accommodation MAY BE [emphasis mine] limited to providing additional time where you intend to contact the claimant to resolve the claim and/or apply for a court order against the claimant within a reasonable amount of time."<p>Note that "MAY BE"? Also the problematic notion of applying for a court order against a claimant absent any legal action by the claimant?<p>I think Heroku needs to remove the "may be" and codify in its policies that Heroku will defer any takedown based upon an allegation if disputed by the website owner/customer, unless/until the complainant obtains a court order ... as do some other services referenced by the EFF (link below) such as Imgur ("We reserve the right to refuse to remove any material that in our view constitutes fair use").<p>www.eff.org/pages/who-has-your-back-copyright-trademark-2014<p>If you agree, let Heroku know.
For completeness, full text of the note from Salesforce legal counsel (which made the original post too long) is: "Thank you for your email. We apologize for the difficulty this situation can cause, but unfortunately, because we are not in a position to determine the merits of trademark (or other intellectual property) infringement disputes, and because of our potential exposure to legal liability in such circumstances, we typically must require the customer to remove the allegedly infringing material within an expeditious time frame. When faced with such a situation in the trademark context, you are free to reach out to us to explain the situation, but in most cases, our ability to provide an accommodation may be limited to providing additional time where you intend to contact the claimant to resolve the claim and/or apply for a court order against the claimant within a reasonable amount of time."