N
Nick99
Guest
Firstly, I am in the UK, and the person I have been contacted by is in Falmouth, MA.
I own a small hobby website (that I run out of my own pocket), and recently received a threatening email along the lines of the following:
{website name} is where I have taken out the name of my site.
=====
Yours website {website name} is an infringment of my companies copyrights. The name "{website name}" is sole property of {website name}, Inc. which can be found at www.{website name}.com. If you do not contact us so we can work out some kind of deal, we will be forced to file legal action.
{CEO’s name}
CEO {website name}, Inc.
======
Their website name is exactly the same as mine, however I have the .net extension whereas they have .com. The full domain name is made up of two common English language words.
I have done some checking and found their website which ends in .com was only registered on the 4th July 2002 (mine was registered on the 4th September 2002) they also currently only have a holding page on the website, and from what I can tell the person who emailed me calling himself a CEO is the sole owner / operator of the site {websitename}.com.
They seem to be saying I cant use the word **** **** which I currently have not done and don’t plan on doing. Whenever I do / have referred to / advertised my website I always use {websitename}.net. Never have I used the two words that make up the domain name separately and without the [dot] net extension being present. On every page of my website I have the site name clearly displayed at the top as being |W|E|B|S|I|T|E|N|A|M|E|.|N|E|T|
I was just wondering if this person is just making an idle threat in the attempt to get my domain name for himself, or if he actually has the legal right to do this, and would actually take legal action across countries.
I have not emailed back yet, but I must stress I run my site as a hobby, something that I do in my spare time for fun, and I certainly don’t want to have to deal with any legal action / costs etc but it seems totally unfair some other person would be able to claim they have copyright on these two words that I don’t even use with a space in-between and without the .net extension and force me to give him my domain name because of it!
Also how would I go about checking on if in-fact he does have a copyright (and therefore the legal right?) on these two common English words when used together with a space in-between?
(funny thing is I am always careful not to violate other people copyright with the content on my site! - e.g when I want to use other peoples pictures etc I always email and ask permission first, and we usually come to some arrangement where I link back to them alongside the image etc!)
Thank’s
I own a small hobby website (that I run out of my own pocket), and recently received a threatening email along the lines of the following:
{website name} is where I have taken out the name of my site.
=====
Yours website {website name} is an infringment of my companies copyrights. The name "{website name}" is sole property of {website name}, Inc. which can be found at www.{website name}.com. If you do not contact us so we can work out some kind of deal, we will be forced to file legal action.
{CEO’s name}
CEO {website name}, Inc.
======
Their website name is exactly the same as mine, however I have the .net extension whereas they have .com. The full domain name is made up of two common English language words.
I have done some checking and found their website which ends in .com was only registered on the 4th July 2002 (mine was registered on the 4th September 2002) they also currently only have a holding page on the website, and from what I can tell the person who emailed me calling himself a CEO is the sole owner / operator of the site {websitename}.com.
They seem to be saying I cant use the word **** **** which I currently have not done and don’t plan on doing. Whenever I do / have referred to / advertised my website I always use {websitename}.net. Never have I used the two words that make up the domain name separately and without the [dot] net extension being present. On every page of my website I have the site name clearly displayed at the top as being |W|E|B|S|I|T|E|N|A|M|E|.|N|E|T|
I was just wondering if this person is just making an idle threat in the attempt to get my domain name for himself, or if he actually has the legal right to do this, and would actually take legal action across countries.
I have not emailed back yet, but I must stress I run my site as a hobby, something that I do in my spare time for fun, and I certainly don’t want to have to deal with any legal action / costs etc but it seems totally unfair some other person would be able to claim they have copyright on these two words that I don’t even use with a space in-between and without the .net extension and force me to give him my domain name because of it!
Also how would I go about checking on if in-fact he does have a copyright (and therefore the legal right?) on these two common English words when used together with a space in-between?
(funny thing is I am always careful not to violate other people copyright with the content on my site! - e.g when I want to use other peoples pictures etc I always email and ask permission first, and we usually come to some arrangement where I link back to them alongside the image etc!)
Thank’s
