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I've been thinking a lot about whether or not to reply to this.
I wanted to give my opinion about the matter at hand. And that's just what I did, to the best of my knowledge and experience. I therefore don't want to have to put any disclaimers at the bottom of every node that I write. And I don't want to be compared to someone playing a lawyer on TV. As with all advice that you ask/get in your life, you should make up your own mind (and don't start shouting "We're all indivduals" in chorus now ;-). But seriously, if you don't make up your own mind, you let yourself be lead by others. And you'll get whatever is coming to you. Even when lawyers are being paid for giving advice, it is no guarantee that their advice is right. From having to deal with lawyers in a corporate setting in the past 7 years, I have learned a few things. And to keep in context, I chose to word it like this:
Getting back to the case at hand. If you don't want to contact the company about the possible trademark issue to be able to feign "plausible deniability", it's too late for that. The Monastery is public and indexed by Google. Lawyers also know how to use Google these days. Putting the question here already put you at a severe disadvantage in that respect. It is not an option to say you didn't know about them. Googling for milkbone tells you why: they're number 1 in the result, you're number 2. The original node here will only make things worse. If you do contact a good lawyer (and I'm a strong believer of "word of mouth" in that respect), the first thing (s)he'll tell you is to change the name of your product/project. That will be the cheapest and least stressful way. Because your resources (an open source project) are going to be way less than whatever resources they (the company) can throw at it. And while it is the most important thing in the world to you now, it is just a side note for whatever manager at the company who decides to put a lawyer on it. If you want to get a lawyer at this time. Do it. Make the decision. If you don't want to get a lawyer at this time and contact them on your own. Do it. Make that decision. If you want to get a lawyer and contact the company on your own. Do that. To me, that would make the most sense in your case right now. Because anything a lawyer writes and sends to the company right now, is going to have to be read by a lawyer from the other party. And you don't want to talk to lawyers right now, because they're just the programmers. You don't ask programmers about design decisions. You ask the people in charge. They might bring in the lawyers, but they may do so at anytime anyway. And then if nothing comes out of direct communication with people in charge, you can change the name of your product/project. In any case, you'll be able to prove that you were looking for a resolution beforehand. And to finally stress again what I said earlier: make up your own mind, decide yourself. Don't let anyone else do that for you. Even if you made the wrong decision, it will have been yours. Liz In reply to Re: Re: Re: Trademark Issues
by liz
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