[mschuster91]

> Waffle House (or any other brand) must and 100% always will send out a C&D for trademark misusage, otherwise they lose legal protection for that trademark.

Time to change that braindead law then. Copyright has a "fair use" provision, and trademark law could be adapted similarly.

[hinkley]

You can use a trademark any time you want. How would brand recognition work if people couldn't talk about Mustangs and Corvettes?

What you can't do is claim it's yours. Or let people think it's yours.

[dragonwriter]

> You can use a trademark any time you want.

No, you can't. If you could use it whenever yoh want, we wouldnt have the concept of “nominative fair use” as the exceptional case of when and how you are allowed to use someone else’s mark in commerce without permission.

[hinkley]

Mmm. “Anything” is maybe hyperbole.

You can’t represent yourself or product as a brand. But you can write a scathing review about them and use their name and nobody can stop you. That wouldn’t be a trademark situation, it would be defamation, not infringement.

[kopecs]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_(U.S._trademark_law)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use

[gorkish]

To me this whole situation seems to be a pretty good example of what not to do if faced with a copyright claim. It's tempting to see outfits like The Onion or Cards Against Humanity doing this kind of thing and feel like you are bulletproof and can do it too. But it's pretty easy to tell when these 'open letter' responses have not received legal review.

Waffle House had a legitimate claim and acted on their obligation to their trademark.

There is a pretty good argument that Waffle House continues to have a claim.

They probably wont do anything because its, frankly, a waste of time.

This could probably have been avoided entirely if copyrights were correctly respected from the beginning.

[cycomanic]

What exactly is the trademark violation that they are "obliged" to defend? Somebody putting location and opening times of their restaurants on a map?

[gorkish]

In this case it was their logo mark. AFAIK that's the only claim that they actually made as well. Reading anything else into this story is ridiculous.