Renato!!

How you doin man?  Shoot me an ICQ sometime if you can..

SupG
----- Original Message -----
From: "Renato" 
To: 
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 2:25 PM
Subject: [twgsdotorg] Copyright and the USO


>
> The Rev just let me know that about the USO problem you guys are facing
... I think I can be helpful. (And I'm happy to help -- good to hear from
you guys!) As some of you might know, I haven't taken the bar exam yet so I
cannot give you legal advice. I have to tell you that up front, because I am
not licensed to practice law. That said, I'll give you some common sense
advice that will probably resolve the issue.
>
> Let's assume that these people have rights to the trademark USO, which
they probably do. Owners of trademarks commonly search the internet and send
out mean letters to anyone who uses their trademark. Fortunately for the tw
community, trademark protection is much different than copyright, and that
works to your advantage. The reason we protect trademarks is so consumers
can distinguish between competing products in the marketplace. In court, USO
would have trouble convincing a judge that FEN was involved in commerce at
all. And as a practical matter, it is unlikely that USO would spend the
money to go to court, given that you aren't really harming them at all.
>
> There are two possible legal claims that USO could bring against FEN. They
could argue that FEN is infringing on their trademark, which requires USO to
prove that FEN uses the trademark to identify a product in commerce. The
court would likely look at things like whether USO and FEN are competing for
the same consumers, whether their products are related, or whether USO is
ever planning to enter FEN's market. Given that USO is a small, private
computer game that is not sold for a profit or marketed in any real way,
there is virtually no likelihood that consumers would confuse the two
products.
>
> USO might also claim that FEN is diluting its trademark in violation of
the Federal Trademark Dilution Act. Under that Act, an "owner of a famous
mark" is entitled to protection from "another person's commercial use in
commerce of a mark or trade name" that "causes dilution of the distinctive
quality of the mark." 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(1). Even assuming that USO was a
"famous mark" (which I doubt), FEN would have strong arguments that it is
not "inherently distinctive," that FEN's use is not "a
commercial use in
commerce," and that it is not "likely to cause dilution of the distinctive
quality" of USO's trademark.
>
> I haven't spent hours looking into this issue, and I would need to see the
letter they sent Mac to get a sense of what their allegations are. But it is
unlikely that USO would be able to do much to FEN as a legal matter. They're
just writing the letter to scare you, and if you had an attorney write them
a letter back, they would drop the issue. If it meant a whole lot to you
guys, I could probably get an attorney to do that for you. Otherwise, I
could probably give Mac advice on how to draft one. It might be easier to
just ditch the USO name or change it (to USOT by adding "tradewars" to the
end or something), which is what they're expecting you to do. Given that
it's just the name of a tw tourney, it might not be worth the headache of
dealing with legal junk.
>
> I hope this was helpful.
>
> Renato
>
> P.S. One last piece of advice -- don't ever register a domain name using
the acronym USO, like USO2003.com or whatever. The law on domain names is
more heavily slanted towards the preexisting trademark holder, and it
wouldn't be worth the legal headache.

--- FEddy 1.4.03/modPHX