New description needed for WarFoundry

[IBBoard]

I've just got the first step of a strong-arm letter from the Lone Wolf guys. I have 72 hours to remove what they deem to be infringements on their trademark - apparently using generic terms to call it the WarFoundry army builder (i.e. "the WarFoundry tool for building armies") isn't allowed! That's like creating an app called "Text Editor" and then complaining that mention of "the Geany text editor" is infringing, despite the fact that it is just a generic description of the Geany app.

So, while I start to strip out all generically used references to this generic term, anyone got any suggestions on what else we could use as the descriptive phrase? I'm going for "WarFoundry army building application" for now, but I don't know whether they'll complain that it is still too close.

Emails below, in case anyone cares.

Hello,

This message is to inform you that it's come to our attention you are improperly using the Army Builder trademark throughout a variety of websites you control. All these uses appear to be in conjunction with the WarFoundry roster construction tool with which you are involved in the development, along with ancillary references from other sites and your forum signatures.

In order to ensure your receipt of this notification, I am submitting it via multiple websites that you control. Please forgive the duplication. Once you establish return contact, I will limit contact to the email address you select.

The name Army Builder exclusively refers to the Army Builder BRAND of roster construction software tools (or points calculators, if you prefer). While other roster construction tools certainly exist, the name Army Builder may only be legally used in conjunction with the Army Builder brand from Lone Wolf Development.

The term Army Builder is a registered trademark belonging to Lone Wolf Development and as such we have exclusive rights to use that mark in connection with any game-related computer software. We have no objection to the use of generic terms with similar meaning, such as "points calculator", "list creator", or "roster construction tool". However, we cannot allow the improper use of our mark, as doing so could result in us losing the trademark.

Due to the concise nature of the Army Builder name and the product's prominence in the marketplace for more than decade, some consumers (perhaps including yourself) may mistakenly use the name to refer to other tools. This is like using the term Band-Aid to refer to another brand of adhesive bandages, and it's something we are legally required to monitor.

We therefore have no choice but to insist that you immediately cease from making any further use of the name Army Builder to refer to your products and remove all references to the name from all internet postings concerning your products. If any advertisements or promotions of your products make use of the Army Builder name, including versions posted on download sites (e.g. cnet.com, tucows.com, etc.), the postings must be removed and a suitable retraction made prominently on that site.

Assuming you take these steps and confirm to us via email (rob@wolflair.com) within 72 hours that you have done so, we will assume that your infringement was not intentional and will take no further action against you in this matter. In the event that we have not heard back from you within the prescribed timeframe, we will have no choice but to refer this matter to our attorneys for further legal action.

In case you are unfamiliar with how trademark protection works, it is a legal requirement that we police the use of our trademarks. If we allow the improper use of our mark, we could potentially lose our rights to the name. We are thus required to do this. If you are interested in understanding this issue better, there is an excellent article on wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark).

PLEASE NOTE! Anyone is absolutely welcome to write their own roster creation tools - we have no desire to suppress other people's creativity. We simply require that everyone refrain from using the "Army Builder" trademark when doing so.

Thank you in advance for your timely cooperation in this matter.

Rob Bowes, President
Lone Wolf Development, Inc.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Bowes (rob@wolflair.com) (408) 927-9880
Lone Wolf Development http://www.wolflair.com

Rob,

I am sorry that you believe I am infringing on your trademark. It was
not my intent to infringe, just to accurately describe what my
application does. Terms like "Roster" focuses on the wrong section of
the process (you're building an army and representing it as a roster,
not creating a roster of generic items) and "points calculator" is such
a generic and bland term that it could cover one of a million different
products not necessarily concerned with building armies. Instead of
those terms, I used the phrase "army builder" to represent the fact that
the tool helped you build your army, with the phrase being a descriptive
suffix rather than part of the name (like "Thunderbird email client").

We are a non-profit group of hobbyists and I do not believe that we pose
a threat to your commercial interests. However, if you feel that my
description of the application (which is not part of its name) that uses
a term to describe what is being created (an "army") and a generic term
to describe what the application is (a "builder" app) infringes on your
trademark then I shall do what is necessary to remove the phrase where I
can.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the Internet, I may not be able to
remove it from all locations as not all locations will be under my
control. I will, however, do what I can to remove all references that I
am able to within the 72 hour time frame that you have imposed.

Please contact me directly before proceeding with any further action, as
I am doing everything in my power to comply with your request.

Regards,

Stuart

[snowblizz]

roster creation program
army list creator
armylist application (this is now what I'm using in my sigs)

, I guess...

I'm this ][ close to take them on on that. I've just googled (which incidentally is a genericized trademark, hey it's their own fault for taking over everything) "army building" and ended up here:
http://www.arcadebomb.com/games/army_bu ... lding.html
so maybe I'll go with that.

They are seriously claiming that they have trademarked a present form of a verb? Damn, they are almost GW in their approach. IP law or not.

I'm doing this for you though. Possibly for the people registered on the Yahoo group. If it were up to me they are going to have to shut down each site I put up. And there'll be plenty of those I can promise you. Though I'm a bit too lazy to keep recreating an yahoo-group all the time.

I guess this is the drawback of me having my sig everywhere. I did have "army builder" used as a verb in my sig. I'd like to ask them if there are any other common word combinations they want to claim ownership over.

[IBBoard]

They are seriously claiming that they have trademarked a present form of a verb? Damn, they are almost GW in their approach. IP law or not.

Seemingly so. I suspect they've only actually trademarked it in the US, so I don't know how applicable it is to the UK and the ~190 other nations that aren't the US. Unfortunately the server itself is in the US, so I guess the law applies there. At the end of the day it is like patents - it may seem stupid to 99% of people, but someone with authority allowed it through and so it is now protected by law, and unless you have the funds the fight it then there is nothing you can do about it other than comply.

Interestingly, the email I have from 2002 from GW Legal uses the phrase "This
means that only the following builders are acceptable" in relation to Rollcall - so even though they didn't precede it with "army", GW were considering Rollcall a "builder" application.

"Army building" seems like the best compromise so far. I didn't like the focus on "army list" or "roster" because it seemed a bit prescriptive and close to the pen-and-paper way of doing it. "Army building" is more pro-active and powerful, but any other suggestions are gratefully accepted (especially if they somehow try to claim that their ownership of the Army Builder trademark stops me using the phrase "army building"!)

I've done a Google search as well, and it is amazing how many other people use it as a generic term. Or even the OpenAB project, which is a bit quiet but touts itself as "the open source implementation of Army Builder". Now that I can understand them having a problem with, but a generic descriptive tag line so that people know what the tool does? Odd.

[snowblizz]

I've done a Google search as well, and it is amazing how many other people use it as a generic term. Or even the OpenAB project, which is a bit quiet but touts itself as "the open source implementation of Army Builder". Now that I can understand them having a problem with, but a generic descriptive tag line so that people know what the tool does? Odd.

LOL! Seriously. They are messing with "us" wit that out there? OK in all fairness those guys have certainly received the same e-mail I suspect. I'm strongly considering registering on Wolflair just to tell them to French Connection UK off for a while. It would be strangely releasing I think.

I've just decided to adopt the view that like GW they are afraid of competition as they know they can't deal with it. Instead of providing something useful they are trying to be the only ones on the market.

[IBBoard]

I explained the situation to Rob, pointed out how I was using two generic words that accurately described my application in the description of the application, not in its name, but that I would comply with their demands as best I could (since I don't control everything out there and I can request people not to call WarFoundry an "army builder", but I can't force them). The response I got back was:

Hi Stuart,

Unfortunately, I don't make the rules. The lawyers and courts make the rules. When it comes to trademarks, the rules are absolute. Either we police the mark everywhere or we risk using it. With most things in a legal context, the owner of something gets to choose when to enforce it. That's not the case with trademarks, so we don't have a choice in this situation.

With regards to using the term "army builder" as descriptive, that's a major concern for us. The reason has to do with what's called "genericized trademarks", since your unchecked use of the trademark as a descriptive term could lead to us actually losing the trademark. For example, the terms "zipper" and "escalator" were trademarks at one time and have been lost due to this process. I encourage you to read the wikipedia article I linked to in my original email, as it's very informative on this issue.

Please do your best to make the necessary changes. If you still have some remaining cleanup to do come Monday, just give me an update on where things are at and we should be able to grant more time to finish the process. If there are certain references that you can't access to correct, let me know where those are and we can figure something out. We're not trying to be evil or unreasonable here. We're simply doing what the law requires us to do in this situation.

Thanks, Rob

In general terms of a trademark, I understand that they've got to defend it or lose it. The slightly ironic part is that they're saying they have to protect it so that it doesn't become a "genericized trademark" when the whole problem is that they've trademarked a generic description as a name! Their other apps (Hero Lab and Card Vault) at at least a bit unique in that the name relates to the purpose but isn't a description (like WarFoundry). Army Builder builds armies - how much more generic can you get? But as I said, they convinced someone that it was acceptable as a trademark, so we've got to follow the law (in the US, at least).

Details of their trademark are available online via a USPTO search. Interestingly they seem to disclaim exclusivity on "army", except where it is part of "Army Builder", but not "builder"!

It's all a bit like one of Eddie Izzard's comments on Star Wars: "Whats that star? It’s the Death Star. What does it do? It does Death!"

Oh, and if you start to search "rollcall" on Google then it already suggests "Rollcall army builder" (note the capitalisation), so even Google considers it to be a generic phrase applicable to army creation applications.

The only other alternative that I've come up with that I need to investigate the legality of is to expand the definition slightly as "army roster builder", since you tend to build a roster of your army. By my simple understanding that should stop our description infringing on their trademark (which is for "Army Builder") but still accurately describes the application using the same derivative of "to build" (the succinct "builder" instead of a change to the verbose "building application"). I'll have to investigate...

Here's my response:

Rob,

I believe I have now cleared up all uses of the phrase "army builder" when used as a description of my application within sites that I control, replacing them with the description "army building application". Hopefully this complies with your requirements as it does not use the phrase "Army Builder" that you have trademarked (or even its uncapitalised generic descriptive form). The only remaining uses of the phrase that I am aware of within my control are either references to your application or discussion with my community to say that the phrase is not to be used as a description of my application due to the trademark issues, along with a suggestion to use the alternate phrase.

Beyond my own sites and the editable information that I have created on other sites (e.g. the project's Ohloh profile for open source software) there is very little that I can do. I have, as mentioned, asked my community to refrain from using the phrase "army builder" in describing my application, but I cannot control whether they use it or not, especially as many of them may be from nations that do not recognise a US trademark. It is also infeasible and almost certainly impossible for me to track down any and all cached and/or uneditable content and make the site owners modify it. Unfortunately that kind of decentralisation and lack of control of information on the Internet as well as its international reach is one of the founding strengths of the Internet/World Wide Web that I cannot influence, and as such I cannot provide a list of remaining references held or created by third-parties.

Hopefully these measures are satisfactory, as I believe I have done all that I can to remove uses of the description that you have trademarked from the locations that are under my control. Again, it was not my intent to infringe on your trademark but only to accurately describe my application using what seemed like a generic and accurate phrase. I have done all I can to comply as swiftly as I could once you have brought your concerns to my attention.

As I understand it your trademark applies specifically to only the phrase "Army Builder", as used by your application, and is specific to the US as the location of the registration. If this understanding is not accurate or you feel that my actions are not sufficient then please can you clarify the extent of your trademark or indicate which additional actions you feel I need to take.

I did briefly read the Wikipedia article yesterday and am familiar with the concept of trademark genericism. However, I see a difference between the use of a new and specific name that previously didn't exist and that has become genericised (e.g. Zipper, Escalator, Asprin and Hoover) compared with the use of a generic descriptive phrase that has been taken as a name (an "army builder" builds armies and a "death ray" is a ray that does death). This difference of genericised name versus generic phrase was, I believed, evident in my use of the phrase "army builder" as a lower-case word within a tag-line such as "the cross-platform, open-source, multi-system army builder" and not as part of my
application's name.

As the law sees no differentiation between a name and a generic description with regards registered trademarks and as you have been granted the use of the phrase as a trademark (at least within the USA,which is the location of my server even if it isn't my location) then I have no choice but to comply with its decision. I hope that my actions meet your criteria and satisfactorily resolve this situation.

For your information, you may also wish to contact Google regarding your trademark. Currently, if you search "Rollcall" (the name of an old army building application that I have maintained) then one of its first suggestion is "Rollcall army builder" (with that exact capitalisation). This implies that Google itself has already seen "army builder" as a generic term for an application that helps to build armies. There are also a variety of other applications from other groups and individuals that use the phrase "army builder" to describe their applications that help build armies.

Regards,

Stuart

[snowblizz]

Yeah, there's a somewhat ironic tint to trying to defend a very general trademark against generalisation. While logically I understand and can to some extent sympathize with their predicament I still think they can only blame themselves. Dont pick two common words that describe the activity as you trademark!

Google has completely unique name and even they haven't been able stop generalisation.

[IBBoard]

I was pointed to that page on genericisation, but if you read the Wikipedia "Trademark" page then they have a link out to Trademark distinctiveness that says that registerability is:

a continuum, with "inherently distinctive" marks at one end, "generic" and "descriptive" marks with no distinctive character at the other end

But of course humans are always subjective and never objective by nature.

I think I've caught everything within my control now (just working through forum posts), so I'll send an email and hopefully have this issue cleared up.

For European reference, this appears to be the EU trademark search engine, but there is still international convention for "commonly understood" trademarks even if it isn't actually trademarked (i.e. someone like Coca Cola could have claimed infringement in the EU even if they weren't registered there if they were sufficiently well known in the area anyway). It may or may not be enforceable when used as a descriptive phrase purely within the EU (i.e. not on American servers) but I don't have the money to challenge it and my recommendation is to try to avoid using the phrase.

[IBBoard]

Bad news guys - it looks like the law (or at least the lawyers) are even more stupid than I thought on this matter. I'm going to have to re-do all of my work as "army building application" is considered a derivative, as are things like "builder of armies". That also means we can't even be more descriptive and go for "army roster builder" or anything!

I'll review the suggestions again later, but unfortunately today was supposed to be the day that I was looking after my son while my wife took some "her time" and wrote her novel :\ Well done to the law for wasting my weekend

Email below for reference:

HI Stuart,

Using the term "army building application" will be seen both by consumers and the court system as either similar or derivative of the "Army Builder" trademark. As such, that term is unacceptable and needs to be corrected. You need to use a term that does not contain the words "army" and "builder" in association with one another, nor may it include any similar or derivative terms.

We don't expect you to scour the internet for all uses of our trademark. We simply require that you correct all the places where you initiated use of the term. If any of those locations cannot be corrected by you, then inform us of them and we'll pursue correction with the website ourselves.

Our trademark is for the term "Army Builder", and it is registered within the United States. Due to reciprocity treaties and the fact that the Army Builder product has been sold internationally for more than a decade, that mark is similarly observed and protected in many other countries, including your own.

The way trademarks work, any similar or derivative use is considered to be an infringement on the original term. The question that is asked by the courts is whether any confusion could arise among consumers between the trademark and the potentially infringing term. So the fact that we have a trademark on the term "Army Builder" means that terms like "army building" and "builder of armies" would be deemed as fundamentally infringing on the trademark.

Whether you personally believe the term "army building application" is sufficiently distinct from our "Army Builder" trademark is immaterial. It boils down to what the courts have to say about it. Our attorney, whose specialty is intellectual property and trademarks, is the person who informed me of the above interpretations years ago. I trust his expertise and our company pays his firm very well for that expertise. So you can either trust him as well or secure your own legal representation to argue the matter before the courts.

I agree that there are other uses of the term "army builder" on the internet. We have to periodically police the mark and are in the midst of contacting those sites, just as we have done with you. You will see a profound decrease in your Google search results over the next week or two.

As for the term Army Builder, we adopted it in 1998 when we first released our product. The term was trademarked shortly thereafter. There were a variety of terms used for the handful of game-specific, freeware tools at the time (RollCall being among them), and the term Army Builder was not in wide use at the time. If it were, we would not have been granted the trademark in the first place by the USPTO. We developed the first commercial tool ever released in the market, and the success of the product combined with its concise name are what has made the term ubiquitous in the industry. It was *not* a matter of the term being well established and us just grabbing it - quite the opposite, in fact. It's actually 12 years of market dominance by the product that made the term so widely known and accepted. That's why we have to police the term - to retain the trademark and not lose it to genericization.

Please inform me whether you wish to contest my claim that "army building application" is an infringement of our trademark. If you accept my claim, please let me know what alternate term you settle on (I provided multiple examples in my original email to you) and we will review your sites to verify everything is now resolved. If you do wish to contest the use, then I'll refer the issue to our attorneys and you can work this out with them. Please be aware that they won't be as amicable about the situation as I've been, given that the amicable approach will have failed at that point. I'll keep my fingers crossed that you reconsider your position and we can bring this situation to an agreeable close via email.

Thanks, Rob

Hi Rob,

I'm sorry that you (or your lawyers) believe that my initial attempt at resolving this is insufficient. I thought that the use of an accurate and simple descriptive English phrase would not be a continued infringment of your trademark. I chose the new phrase on good faith as something that I believed to be a non-derivative phrase containing an English noun of the end product ("army") and a verb to describe the action that the application helps the user with to create that end product ("building"). An interpretation that this still infringes your trademark seemed to me, when I made the choice, to be comparable to saying that calling something "escalating" infringed on the "Escalator" trademark when it was first created despite the fact that "escalating" is a common English word.

I note that you say I cannot use derivatives of the term (including some example derivatives), but that your trademark registration disclaims exclusive rights to the term "army". Am I correct in understanding that this means I can use terms such as "army creator" and that it is only the combinations of the concepts of "army" and "builder" in combination in both their named and descriptive form and that names such as "army creator" would be acceptible? I am in discussion with my community about alternative descriptive phrases, but wish to use something more accurate and meaningful than phrases like "points calculator".

Please inform me as soon as possible whether you feel that the term "army creator" infringes upon your trademark, as I have already wasted a considerable amount of my free time attempting to comply with your request, and I do not wish to repeat this more than necessary.

Is it still acceptable to yourself and your lawyers if, in addition to being used in direct relationship to your product, the phrase "army builder" remains (for at least a short period) in text on my sites explaining that the phrase is not to be used because it is a trademarked name? If not then please can you advise on what you believe would be an acceptable way for me to explain to my community that the phrase (and descriptive, non-capitalised phrases that contain similar words) should not be used? In this regard I feel I have the conundrum of effectively saying "don't call the monkey a primate" when "primate" is a prohibited word.

As I said, I am a hobbyist and the project is open source/non-profit. I fully realise that my understanding is not important for the actual interpretation of the law. This is why I am doing everything that I can to resolve this situation amicably.


As I have made an attempt to resolve this issue that was unfortunately not as satisfactory as I would have hoped, then I would find it hugely helpful if you could give me an extension to resolve this matter fully. I was not intentionally infringing on your trademark in the first instance, and I am co-operating and attempting to remove such infringement as I would like this matter to provide as little futher intrusion on both of our time as possible. I am, however, limited in what I can achieve as a single person modifying things in a given time.

Thanks,

Stuart

[IBBoard]

I'm going for "army creator" at the moment, unless anyone has any better suggestions, as Rob has deemed it officially 'allowable' for me to use that sub-section of the English language. We also now have a "legal" sub-section on our development wiki front page to explain the situation.

I'll do what I can to clean things up today, but I'm comparatively limited in time. Sorry that this is all delaying work on new WarFoundry features, but c'est la vie when you work in a world of corporations.

I've contacted the EFF regarding some of the assertions in the emails and I'll be making use of the free legal helpline that comes with my British Computer Society membership on Monday as well. I don't intend to challenge the "Army Builder" trademark itself, but I remain unconvinced about the legitimacy of some of their other claims. In the mean time, and in case "layperson logic" doesn't agree with "corporately-oriented law", then I'm doing my best to comply for now.

Again, Rob's email is below for reference. The attachment was not overly dissimilar to their original email. In the best intentions of open and transparent information sharing I also intend to create a page containing both my emails and his as a discussion point for the community and to inform future developers of the potential pitfalls with IP law.

Hi Stuart,

The term "army creator" is a perfectly acceptable alternative, as it does not utilize the words "army" and "builder" (or derivatives) in combination. A number of tools out there use that term. We don't actively suggest it, because we prefer to omit both formative words of our trademark from a market standpoint, but it is a perfectly valid choice.

A statement on your site that specifically asks users not to use the term "army builder" as a descriptive phrase is completely reasonable, provided it includes an explanation of why the term is not acceptable. In other words, you must also identify that the name "Army Builder" is a trademark of Lone Wolf Development. Such a notice can remain for as long as you believe it to be helpful in educating your users and avoiding future problems. There are a number of forum
sites that have posted such clarifications to their users when problems arise. In fact, we've provided a few with an explanatory message that is targeted at consumers. I've attached it in case you find it more expedient to copy and paste than worry about whether the language you choose will satisfy what's needed.

Please realize that I don't make the rules on how this stuff works. Unfortunately, the rules for trademarks make no allowance for the IP owner to choose when to enforce the mark, so we have to be equally firm with everyone. We strive to be reasonable, albeit firm, as we assume fans simply aren't aware of the issues at play. This approach is in stark contrast to how another company in our industry tends to operate. Whatever you do, be careful when dealing with certain IPs or you could have a much *less* enjoyable experience the next time, whether or not the project is for-profit.

Lastly, your efforts at cooperating thus far have demonstrated good faith in working to resolve everything. If it takes a bit longer to get everything handled properly and completely on your end, we won't have a problem with that. Please keep me posted on the status and inform me when you believe everything to be dealt with. We can then verify it all on our end and put this matter behind us.

Thanks, Rob

As a note on the above, I like how he basically admits that they can't do anything about people using one or the other of the words, but that they intentionally provide suggestions that use neither in the hopes that people will use the less descriptive phrases as descriptions.

He's also continuing to be a little selective with the truth in his phrasing regarding trademark law - the law only states that they will lose the trademark if they don't enforce it, not that they are legally bound to enforce it (which would mean that there was some law equivalent to "neglect" or "child abandonment" when trademarks weren't enforced).

Here's my response:

Rob,

I am glad that there is a compromise that we have reached on this issue and that there is a phrase that I am able to use that succinctly describes the functionality of my application without infringing on your trademark that is also derived from the same base words.

I will attempt to remove all uses of the phrase "army building software" and all disallowed uses of the phrase "army builder" that I am able to edit. My time is more limited today than it was yesterday, and so I will have to update you at the end of today regarding my progress.

I am sorry that you have had to take such action, and I hope that my 'cleansed' content will meet with your approval. I shall endeavour to avoid future use of your trademark in any way by myself or my community (wherever I have control) in a manner that may be considered infringing.

Regards,

Stuart

Now to go through all of those forum posts again...

[snowblizz]

I find that "we are reasonable and firm, unlike *others*" hilarious. They are just as bad as anyone else, he was just in a previous post waving his big male member expensive lawyers around to show who's the boss and throwing some threats around.

You are right, the question is what "enforces" really means. Is it enough that they send threatening e-mails to people. Though what little I understand of the matter is that if someone wants to infringe on the trademark they only need to find a single instance of it not being enforced and they can the freely do so. Yet a lot of companies ARE working proactively with e.g. fansites so I wonder.

And I'm a patient man. It's not YOUR fault that a certain company who themselves have built their business on infringing on trademarks are making trouble. It only furthers my conviction that OSS WarFundry is the way to go. Neither me nor any in my gaming group will ever throw a cent at those peopel again.

[IBBoard]

I've sent the following email to confirm that I've tidied things up as best as I think I can/need:

Rob,

I have done what I can and I believe I have now edited all use of "army builder" or derivatives of the common base words that may be considered an infringing use with regards a description of my application where it is possible and within my control. All remaining uses should, as I understand it, be fair and reasonable use in direct reference to your
application.

Hopefully this resolves the issues so that you can review the site and we can put the matter behind us. If not then please indicate any remaining infringements that you believe may exist and I'll do what I can as soon as I can to resolve them.

Regards,

Stuart

I've not heard back from them yet, which is hopefully a good thing. It looks like we might have got off lightly with "Emails from the President", though. I contacted the maintainer of Forward Kommander (which used to include the prohibited phrase [insert scary music] in its name) and seemingly they got the works with a full Cease and Desist. Obviously they're working at various levels depending on whether it is an obvious infringement (use in a name) or potentially acceptable use that they're hoping people won't challenge (see second paragraph on Wikipedia about Maytag's "Whisper Quiet" trademark).

I agree that they're as bad as others, made worse by the fact that their trademark is an accurate but generic description using two English words that probably have their origins in old French.

I like the fact that your gaming group is now against them - bad PR is a definite problem with this kind of issue and the action they've taken, especially over generic phrases rather than obvious trademarks (e.g. Xerox is a new word to the English language, as far as I know, therefore the term "Xeroxing" that some Americans use would obviously be bad instead of the generic "photocopying"). It seems that there might be others who agree as well.

Can I quote you on some of those post bits - especially the "OSS WarFoundry is the way to go" and "we're not giving them our money"?

[snowblizz]

I guess you can quote me on that. Though technically I can't speak for ALL in my gaming group but since last time it was thanks to me that we got hold of That Program That Shall Not Be Named and I paid for the 16 copies. We are now twice as many people (and lots of new ones) and there have been inquiries from time to time but I've not really felt like organising another purchase. This broke the camels back though.

[IBBoard]

I'll keep it to the "open source" quote and a "you're not getting a single penny again" quote rather than implicating your whole group. Any work to make the group aware of the situation and the alternatives is always greatly appreciated, though

Looking at the Google search results, I think they might be disappointed with the effect of this legal action. There isn't anything near the top that is bad PR (yet) but their hope to see a "profound decrease in your Google search results" may be somewhat thwarted. There are currently about 1 million results, and WarFoundry is still on the front page with the updated cache (so the content where we're only using Army Builder in the context of their application, which is all above board).

Still no response from after the supposed "review"...

[Edit] Just gone through and added my emails in for completeness. Sorry about it extending the topic so much, but I thought it was only fair for balance and full transparency!

[IBBoard]

Still nothing. Obviously after having threatened me and me having said "I've done it" then they don't actually care any more. If I don't hear anything by tomorrow evening then I'll return the favour, email Rob and say "I've not heard anything from you in X hours. If I hear nothing more in the next 24 hours (making it a total of Y hours) then I'll assume that you and your lawyers are happy with my use on my sites of your trademark and the other derivatives of common base words that you claim rights over site and that no further action is necessary on my part."

I have, however, received an initial response from the EFF. Nothing useful yet, but they're going to pass my email on to a UK attorney mailing list.

[IBBoard]

Still nothing, and it is approaching 120 hours since I emailed him and said "I think I've cleared it all now - tell me if you think I missed anything". I've now sent the following email, so hopefully we'll have a conclusion on this (minus the advice/insight from the EFF) soon.

Rob,

It has now been nearly 120 hours since I last emailed you to say that I believed I had cleared up all uses of the term "Army Builder" that were not a reference to your application, all all uses of terms from common base words that you also claimed sole ownership of. It is also approaching 100 hours since the deadline that you set in your original email.

So far I have not heard from you with either confirmation that my sites are okay as they stand with the changes that I made, or with details of aspects of my site that you perceive as still potentially infringing on your trademark.

Please respond within 24 hours, or I will assume that yourself and your lawyers are happy with the content of my sites as they stand. If this is not the case then I remain happy to discuss the situation to come to an amicable arrangement and await your notification on what you feel is not acceptable.

Regards,

Stuart

[edit] It obviously helps to poke people, as I just got a response within 15 minutes after getting nothing for days! It looks like we're in the clear so far:

Hi Stuart,

We've gone through multiple sections of your various sites and found no problems thus far. There are still some places we need to verify, but all is looking good. If we happen to find a lingering issue, we'll let you know. Please assume that all is well unless you hear from me further.

Thanks for taking care of this,
Rob