Shutterfly is trying to shut us down!
Filed Under News |
We received the following in a recent email:
It has come to our attention that you have registered the following domain name(s):
skutterfly.com
Shutterfly name and designs are well known in the online photo service community. Shutterfly has expended considerable resources and time in developing consumer and industry recognition and goodwill in its SHUTTERFLY brand and design trademark, for online photographic services. It is clear that you are trying to capitalize on our very strong trademark rights in the Shutterfly Mark by using a confusingly similar domain name to divert traffic to your site. Your registration and use of this domain name infringes our client’s trademark rights because it creates the likelihood of confusion, mistake or deception in that the public will be confused as to the source or sponsorship of the goods and/or services provided by you or affiliation with Shutterfly. This type of misrepresentation is specifically banned by existing federal statutes covered in the AntiCyberSquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), which also provides for statutory damages specifically directed toward domain names which infringe or dilute existing trademarks of up to $100,000.00 per infringing domain.
We hereby demand that you immediately discontinue use of this domain name and that you assign the domain name registration to Shutterfly, Inc…by December 12, 2007.
Happy Holidays
Comments
4 Comments so far
FIGHT THEM and Sue the crap out of Shutterfly! They obviously haven’t been to the site to see that you are selling shirts and not stock photo’s. They would have to prove that you using your site actually infringes on the tradmark rights. You font is not the same, you do not sell the same type of items and in my humble opinon does not confuse the public.
If they want your site make them pay for it! They should have registered the site as a possible when they filed their own, everyone who owns a site is asked to also register the .org’s, .net’s, as a means’ of protection as well as any name that closely resembles the named site. They gambled and didn’t and now they WANT…make them PAY!
Just my thoughts, I’ll keep track on t-shirt forms…goo luck and know that the rest of us t-shirt guys/gals are behind you. What can we do to get the word out?
Chris
Salonteez.com
I certainly wont be doing any business with Shutterfly again and you can be sure Ill share this information with others that possibly use their services.
This should not even be an issue! Shutterfly did not register the name so they have no possible claim over it. Fight them all the way to the top, corporations shouldn’t get away with this stuff anymore.
[…] In the letter, it claimed that the owner of skutterfly.com was trying to captialize on the trademark of shutterfly when they registered the skutterfly.com domain name. They quoted the ACPA (Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act) in their email threat and demanded the owner stop using the skutterfly domain and turn it over to Shutterfly. The truth was, Nate, the owner of Skutterfly.com creates cool t-shirts for kids, and it just happens that the first t-shirt he made for his daughter was a cross between a skull and a butterfly, so he put the two together and named his business Skutterfly! […]