bein fined for website name

ABERDEEN_2

Looking for a bit of advice

I set up a website last month and yesterday received a letter from a solicitor saying that because it had two words in it the same as another company I have to shut it down immediately and pay a cheque for £500 in damages in fourteen days or be taken to court.

I couldn't get hold of this solicitor or mine yesterday as they are shut for Xmas. 14 days from the letter takes me to the third of January.

There was no malice intended from my site and it sold nothing like the other companies and also i had no sales. I have shut it down now.

Will I have to pay this £500 or should I have got a warning letter first? Will an apology letter help?

Also I don't have £500 in 14 days and don't own a cheque book

Just looking for some advice please

Mistral001

Nothing much you can do about it untill you contact your own solicitor who can advise you. You have plenty of time to sort it out as most solicitors are open the day after Boxing Day. The exact wording of the letter might be important. The £500 will not be a fine. if the letter calls it a fine then the solictor is unlikely to be a genuine one in my view or at least not a very knowledgeable one.. The £500 is likely be estimated damages to date or something like that.

It is a criminal offense to impersonate a lawyer so if the letter turns out to be a fake then your solictor will no doubt be only to happy to contact the Police to report it.

DevCoder

What were the two words? Were they trademarks?

ABERDEEN_2

Mistral001 wrote: »

Nothing much you can do about it untill you contact your own solicitor who can advise you. You have plenty of time to sort it out as most solicitors are open the day after Boxing Day. The exact wording of the letter might be important. The £500 will not be a fine. if the letter calls it a fine then the solictor is unlikely to be a genuine one in my view or at least not a very knowledgeable one.. The £500 is likely be estimated damages to date or something like that.

It is a criminal offense to impersonate a lawyer so if the letter turns out to be a fake then your solictor will no doubt be only to happy to contact the Police to report it.

Sorry yes it was for damages. It is a trade mark company. Looks like I've made a stupid mistake and will just have to pay the £500

Mojisola

Don't they have to prove some kind of loss before demanding payment from you?

System

I agree to shutting it down but the £500 is purely speculative. They need to prove the loss.

Tell them you will pay the £500 after they have bought the website name from you for £1000

ABERDEEN_2

Won't the £500 be for the solicitor writing me that two page letter? I also received the same letter twice. Not very professional.

Naf

krisdorey wrote: »

What were the two words? Were they trademarks?

Agreed, you'd need to be more specific.

If you used something like Pyrex, Duracell, Kevlar; they are all trade names, registered trademarks or copyrighted so you would have been breaking the law.

However, this doesn't mean you automatically need to pay up now; even if they are a solicitor, they don't have the authority to demand you pay up. But they absolutely can take you to court.
Don't just pay, get legal advice first.

ABERDEEN_2

Naf wrote: »

Agreed, you'd need to be more specific.

If you used something like Pyrex, Duracell, Kevlar; they are all trade names, registered trademarks or copyrighted so you would have been breaking the law.

However, this doesn't mean you automatically need to pay up now; even if they are a solicitor, they don't have the authority to demand you pay up. But they absolutely can take you to court.
Don't just pay, get legal advice first.

It was silent night the bed company

Uncertain

The trouble here is that you can easily spend that amount getting legal advice (which of course is what they are relying on).

Are you in the wrong and, if so, is the amount they are demanding reasonable?

If they take you to court and win they will only get whatever the court feels is reasonable but you will end up paying their costs on top which could easily cost more.

One response, if you are in the wrong, would be to pay a lower amount and effectively dare them to sue you for the rest.

Do try to get one to one legal advice before doing this. You may have some legal cover as part of your house insurance. If so it must be worth a call to their advice line.

Years ago Kodak (remember them) tried this on. They registered all sorts of words as trademarks (like "clicknology" - yes honestly) ant got some terrible press trying to sue perfectly innocent people who "infringed" them. They came unstuck trying to make "Gold" a trademark!

Mojisola

ABERDEEN wrote: »

There was no malice intended from my site and it sold nothing like the other companies and also i had no sales. I have shut it down now.

It sounds unlikely that the company would be able to prove any losses to them.

Also, if your website name was something like "silentnightantisnoring.com", people would realise as soon as they clicked on your site that you weren't selling beds or mattresses.

Do watch the price of legal advice but I wouldn't hand over £500 without getting a legal opinion.