quote:
>>> "The courts will let you sue anyone over just about anything."

Not a true statement, even here in the US. You can initiate a lawsuit, but the defendant can have the case dismissed before it ever goes to trial if there are no grounds for the suit itself. In this case, Hasbro very obviously had strong grounds for an infringement suit.

You do not know what you are talking about. Sueing someone is what is called a "privileged act" in the US, meaning that anyone can sue anyone else for just about anything. I could easily sue you in state or federal court for your post above.

Yes, you could get such a suit dismissed, but this would take no less than a year, and probably closer to two years or longer, especially if I sued you in a slower court (and believe me, the litigation lawyers know which ones are fast and which are slow).

In the meantime, you are legally required to put up an "affirmative defense." You cannot just take the attitude that the suit is specious and will be dismissed, as this can easily be taken as an admission of guilt, culpability, or another form of assent to the original suit, making it much more difficult for you to get the suit dismissed.

To get a suit dismissed in court will cost you somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. To actually have the suit tried will cost
between $200,000 and $500,000.

Now if there's a legitimate dispute, you can go to legally binding arbitration, where most civil-corporate suits end up. This will take about half the time (sometimes much less) of going to court, and will cost about half as much.

If you're *really* lucky, you can go to mediation rather than arbitration. This isn't as binding as arbitration, but it tends to be faster and cost a bit less.

How do I know all this? I've been through the process of having my company be maliciously sued in a corporate matter, and found out just exactly how easy it is to do, and how some big companies have not the slightest hesitation in using the lever of money in the legal system against you. Sure it stinks, but most people have no idea that this is how it actually works.

Note however that this doesn't mean that the people in the cases Hasbro bought didn't deserve to be sued. Copyright and trademark law are fuzzy things, and no more so than in software where matters of "look and feel" have been the cause of conflicting decisions. Still, companies like Hasbro/Infogrames can be expected to mount a vigorous defense of their intellectual property; anyone who thinks otherwise is just fooling themselves.



[edited by - archetypist on September 26, 2002 9:39:47 AM]

Arch, I won''t argue whether the suit against you was malicious in intent or based on a valid claim; I don''t know anything about your suit, so won''t speculate.

But - I''ve worked with corporate lawyers for some 12 years now, and I''ve got to say you learn to look at things with an unbiased view.

In far too many cases, what appears to be a corporate giant putting down a small business for what seems to be no reason has a much deeper rationale behind it, especially in IP suits. Corporations have little to no choice but to enforce their properties, because failure to do so will set precedent that can and will be used against them at a future time.

A company that fails to pursue it''s trademark claims against domain names, such as the Clue.com example further up, will come up in court later to reflect the company''s past "leniency" or "passivity" in allowing such sites to exist. This was largely the result of the domain squatters back during the early boom of the internet, when individuals would gobble up such domain names as "McDonalds.com", "Apple.net", etc., etc.

Let''s not forget mirror/spoof sites, or people who register similar domains hoping to lure poor typists to their sites. Did you know that an internet porn company is trying to buy the rights to the Napster domain, to use the popularity of the name to lure further traffic?

I''m not saying the practice is a good one; ultimately yes, it hurts small business and independent developers badly. However, this (to me) simply means that these small companies need to stop thinking like a bunch of friends who like to program, and instead think like corporation owners. Too many times I''ve seen suits happen because the defendent never considered that what they were doing might be infringing on someone else''s rights.

Harsh, perhaps - but I take the stance better safe than sorry. Cover your bases, do your research and yes, spend money up front - you lessen the chance of a lawsuit.

I have to say that if the above is true (about court costs) then your legal system sucks big time. That means any big company could put me out of business more or less by rpessing a button. What happens if you dont have $200k or ven $2k? Do you just get put into receivership straight away?
I don''t understand why ANY court case should take 2 years to be heard, let alone dismissed, this is lawyers dragging their feet to put up their hourly earnings.
Lawyers should work on a small number of court cases at a time, and work on them full time, not "Oh Ive sent him a letter and I''ll give him 2 weeks to respond". Now we have email, you would have thought that court cases would go 10 times faster. No prizes for guessing why lawyers dont consider emails legaly binding...
Thank god I live in Europe

http://www.positech.co.uk

quote: Original post by EricTrickster
A company that fails to pursue it's trademark claims against domain names, such as the Clue.com example further up, will come up in court later to reflect the company's past "leniency" or "passivity" in allowing such sites to exist. This was largely the result of the domain squatters back during the early boom of the internet, when individuals would gobble up such domain names as "McDonalds.com", "Apple.net", etc., etc.

Hasbro doesn't own the word "clue" as they claimed in the court case (which is why they lost). mcdonalds.com is a lot more arguable than clue.com since the name "McDonalds" is the name of the company. I'd have to say that even if apple.com was bought by someone for the purpose of having a site about apples then there wouldn't be any problems with that. Of course, Apple Computer Inc. could then sue them over the domain name, but if the person who owned the domain had enough money to go through the lawsuit process, they'd be able to hold on to it. Because ultimately Apple Computer Inc. can't say it has the right to the domain name apple.com just like any other company named "Apple [something]" can't claim the right to it. Whoever got it first got it first. Of course, if the owner didn't have the money to fight for the domain name they'd be forced to give it up.

For instance, Entrepreneur Media, Inc. owners of entrepreneur.com sued WebMagic, Inc. owners of entrepreneurS.com because they felt that they had the right to the domain name. WebMagic had the money and lawyers to defend itself, and convinced Entrepreneur Media to drop the lawsuit.

My point is there are a LOT of bullshit lawsuits that are started, based simply on the hope that the other party won't have enough money to defend themselves. And yes cliffsky, our justice system is quite messed up. Freedom is a double edged sword.

[edited by - FenixDown on September 26, 2002 5:44:45 PM]

Eric, you''re right about having to defend your trademark. And of course some companies (e.g. McDonalds, Disney) take this to an extreme. But if you don''t, if I recall correctly you can actually lose the trademark as being "unattended" (or some similar term -- it''s been awhile since I had to deal with that).

And in cases of IP, as with Hasbro, these often have to be the most vigorously protected, as they can otherwise quickly be diluted both commercially and legally.

(In our case, the suit brought against us had nothing to do with IP or anything else. It was just malicious, or a "sharks" business tactic to try to get us to cave in to ridiculous demands, depending on your POV -- and maybe your ethics. It was most definitely Not Fun.)

Cliffski, you can often get lawyers to work on contingency; that is, they get paid out of whatever settlement you reach if there is one. Often these settlements will have separate provisions for legal fees as well. This can be a risky business, but if you think you have a good case (or the one against you is crap), a savvy lawyer can make a lot of money this way.

But yeah: it stinks.