So, I just got a fun letter from Google, saying that my company, Sitezoogle.com, is infringing on their trademark. Specifically, their complaint is that our name is a combination of "website" and "google".<p>If that's not bad enough, my lawyer's firm represents Google in Canada and can't help due to conflict of interest. Ugh.<p>Does anyone have experience with a great US trademark lawyer and/or experience fighting a trademark dispute?<p>BTW: We make website building tools for niche markets. Our main product (which we have a US trademark for) is Bandzoogle.com, a website builder for musicians. We changed the company name to Sitezoogle, because we added a bunch of new non-band markets.<p>Help is appreciated!
IANAL but I think their claim is weak. "Site" + "Google"? OK, where did the "z" come from?<p>They can't really claim dibs on any name that happens to end in "oogle" and your firm does not seem to have anything to do with web search. Domino Sugar once tried to claim that Dominos Pizza was infringing on their name, a claim which they ultimately lost.<p>They've surely got the pockets to harass you and sadly you're going to need an attorney to respond to their complaint.
Have you considered contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation? They might take interest in this case (I know they did some work in these sorts of domain name disputes before), and they are near enough to Google HQ that they might have some contacts there.
honestly, there was no thought of google when you decided to suffix your names with "oogle"? The actual spelling of the word is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol</a> so you just happened to choose the bit of the word the misspelled...
This is almost exactly like Google's trademark claim against Groovle.com a couple months ago, which was unanimously dismissed (read: not even close) in Canada. However, that was only the second time out of 65 that Google has lost a domain name dispute.<p><a href="http://www.gawkwire.com/domains/google_loses_domain_name_trademark_arbitration.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gawkwire.com/domains/google_loses_domain_name_tra...</a><p>In the end, unless you have a ton of money to throw down on a big-time lawyer and a lot of press coverage, I don't think your choice of attorneys is going to make or break your defense. Might be better to just go ahead and decide if your domain name is worth the money it'll take to defend it.
Not sure if you found someone to help you. If not then I will suggest Rodenbaugh Law - <a href="http://www.rodenbaugh.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rodenbaugh.com/</a> - Mike Rodenbaugh has extensive transactional and dispute resolution experience with respect to intellectual property, e-commerce and internet marketing. He has specialized in trademark and domain name matters since 1995, including more than 7 years at Yahoo! Inc. mike@rodenbaugh.com
Whichever lawyer you will hire, should start the response letter with the following statement:<p><pre><code> "Do Not Do Evil"
</code></pre>
What kind of a rubbish is that
<a href="http://www.coastlawgroup.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.coastlawgroup.com</a> - great team, Seyamack Kouretchian there is the technology guru to speak with.