...consider that organizations can lose their trademarks if they don't actively defend them against even vague and doubtful potential infringements. If they let this case slip without issuing a token C&D, it could be cited later by an actual competitor as grounds for permitting their own infringement.
That's not to say that the law isn't stupid, but the proper target for complaints about the stupidity of the law is your local congresscritter, not the lawyers who are just dealing with the laws as they are
I know someone that works for a company that sends these letters. She's a moron. In fact, everyone that "researches" these cases at that company is a moron (at least all the ones I've met) They get a trademark, in this case "The other white meat" as a case file. It comes with the trademark itself, some pictures of how its used on cans and what-not and other basic info. Then they put the terms into a scripting program they have... which is basically just a web crawler. The crawler finds sites that use the terms and other sites that link to them. They then build a case file based on this info that is punched into a form letter and sent off to be signed. Here's the kicker: The more "offenses" they find, the more they get paid. It's like commission. They can make stupid amounts of money doing nothing at all for the whole day. It's so profitable they actually hire teams of people to print out their "Case files" (screenshots of websites) in full color, binder them and ship them to various places. I know another person that works in the "Binder department." The person I know working the case files makes in excess of $50k a year, the binder person about $25k, but of course they don't have the skills needed to work a search engine I guess.
Before having a knee-jerk anti-lawyer moment... (Score:5, Informative)
...consider that organizations can lose their trademarks if they don't actively defend them against even vague and doubtful potential infringements. If they let this case slip without issuing a token C&D, it could be cited later by an actual competitor as grounds for permitting their own infringement.
That's not to say that the law isn't stupid, but the proper target for complaints about the stupidity of the law is your local congresscritter, not the lawyers who are just dealing with the laws as they are
Re:Before having a knee-jerk anti-lawyer moment... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know someone that works for a company that sends these letters. She's a moron.
If we didn't have jobs for morons to do the rest of us would have to support them with welfare.
Re: (Score:2)
We could always send them off on the "B" Ark, and tell them that a giant space goat was about to eat the Earth...
Re: (Score:2)
We could always send them off on the "B" Ark, and tell them that a giant space goat was about to eat the Earth...
No.... thats how we got into this situation in the first place.