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by aestetix_
5295 days ago
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(note, I am not a lawyer) I've dealt with this exact issue before, although through US law and not UK law. One thing I found is that a lot of places who have trademarks have to send out notices like this in order to maintain their ownership of the trademark. That said, it's hard to get context on this with the information you've given us. Did this message come from a lawyer, or just an executive working there? A name change can kill a company, and the burden is likely on them to demonstrate that you are directly impacting them, which is hard to say without knowing anything about them. Do you think they have the resources to bring an infringement suit on you? Trademark infringement can be hard to establish. A quick example: in the US, there are over 30 trademarks on the letters "AMD", for all kinds of different purposes. Trademarks are more than just a name, an infringement has to meet multiple standards. I would look at the law on the books (in the US it's at uspto.gov, I don't know about the UK) and proceed from there. |
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I appreciate that the information is a bit limited but my intention is not to publicly name and shame so I have tried not to divulge too many specific details. I can say though, that what we share in common is the word 'owl' in our names, we are both building apps for audio content (in their case audiobooks) and in our case radio programmes / podcasts. Our owl logos also look very distinctly different.
The company who is pursuing us, from their letter, seem to feel that we should rebrand and I am wondering if they really have any grounds or are just being a bit pushy. As you mentioned there are several trademarks for 'AMD' in the US and I've found there are also several trademarks that include the word 'owl'. Of course if we had unknowingly named and branded our company exactly the same name as another registered trademark then we would be seriously considering a change. I am not convinced if it is warranted in this case though.