Unauthorized use of VGOD trademark :P

Thank you @lummy

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Also @daath, I probably would not answer the request. As we say in France if you cannot afford to deliver with recorded delivery, you cannot be expected to be read. If you do, I would only answer after having contacted VGOD directly.

If you wish to answer the trademark enforcement contractor, it should ideally contain:

  • them to provide a clear statement of the mandate they have from VGOD, followed by a passive comment that their letter is published and is garnering very negative feedback from the community and that you have contacted their expected customer about this.

  • state the fact that the site hosted in the Netherlands and that for all intents and purposes is legal under Dutch legislation

  • point that they seem to have not followed due process of ensuring their claims were substantiated, and that from their letter you have no clue what they are on about as the letter does not seem to match the purpose of this site.

  • that there is clear precedent for reviews not being covered by trademark, even in US, if this is what they are referring to
    ( https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/olive-garden-says-blog-needs-ok-to-publish-phrase-olive-garden-it-doesnt/ )

  • the site is non commercial, and cannot in anyway be confused with an official VGOD website

  • no part of the site sells, appropriates or purposes itself in parts or as a whole using VGOD brand.

  • That you answer their communication as a courteous gesture, saving them the hassle of wasting time and money pursuing a case in error. That you would be glad for an answer retracting their previous statements but will expect that if no answer is received to this communication in 7 days, you will take this lack of answer as an admission of the error.

  • I would also insist in further communication to be made in the official language of the jurisdiction, IIRC Dutch if the site is in Netherlands.

  • Don’t hesitate to say that you are happy to clarify the matter in front of the relevant court of law and are open to corrective action on the site if they can detail a particular point of concern, but that as you are convinced that as you are not in any way misusing their trademark, you are entirely opposed to any kind of settlement.

For the record: VGOD is indeed registered as an European and UK trademark
https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/4/EU015570864
https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00003172281
which proves that the original company has at least done the basic work of registering their brand.

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Their ratings have basically halved over night. :joy:

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How long was that list of recipes? I only found 13 plus one titled V-v god or something which was on the front page and consists of 50% fuck you and 1% Wow. :rofl:

Did they get private recipes by scraping? Can you counter threaten them for that?

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Just gonna leave this here and congratulate Yellow Brand Protection, on protecting the VGOD brand, GOOD JOB GUYS and yes i do expect your highly advanced software to highlight this post when scraping this forum.

Let me quote your video “brand damage are significant even irreversible”, a shame that VGOD had to learn that the hard way using a company that was supposed to protect their brand.

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I wonder if Yellow acted automatically or if they ran this by VGOD before sending out the threats. Either way, it’s an expensive lesson for them all to learn.

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They obviously got it from scraping, because they didn’t read any of the links, as far as I can tell.

The full list is this one:

https://i.imgur.com/khSUCSx.png

Yep, it looks like they did the opposite of their job :stuck_out_tongue:

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You’ve got your own internet army @daath! We’re a feisty bunch. :smiling_imp:

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I particularly like this one from Jennifer Desangles-Winstead

You mad bro’??? In case you didn’t know. The DIY community is the tightest vaping community and likely the most aggressive. You just messed with the rebellion. Expect a huge waive of backlash and plenty of people targeting your product. This backlash won’t affect just your juice it affects your hardware and keep in mind DIY is international. I believe you have made a huge mistake targeting DIY.

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<3 @TheJuiceFairy :smiley:

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We need a soundtrack from John Williams, lol.

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Let’s start with this!

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The reality is that yellow has probably been contracted on a broad mandate by the brand, and they have not expressedly asked elr to be targeted in particular.
The problem is the automated nature of yellow’s request as identified by @daath.
My money is on, the request is baseless and the company will think twice about using them again.
I would suggest press coverage, and have passed on pointers to do so to Lars as that would give adequate publicity to the standards of work of the contractor.

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It’s almost always too late for the “Law” lesson that happened over this …the Law of Unintended Consequences. In business you pick your battles and sometimes you have to “Go to the Mattresses”, but this C&D doesn’t even fit any of the criteria they allegedly focus on in their Yellow Brand product description. Someone is going to end up in Court over this …Yellow Brand vs VGOD. A perfect example of the Natural Law described above …a “Lose Lose” proposition. You can’t fix stupid, but you can sue Stupids pants off. Way to blunder YB and VGOD! [gets popcorn bucket]

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Look before you send a threatening letter.

I guess automated laziness didn’t pay off this time.

ouch…

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One possible scenario is they, VGOD are tired of the manufacturers cloning their mods so they hire Yellow.
Yellow goes golfing but has the mail room intern google the words VGOD and clone. Yellow then sends C&D letters to anyone and everyone that has those words listed on their website before investigating?:thinking:

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The line in the Suit brought by VGOD against YB will predictably state “…Lack of Due Diligence” and “caused irreparable harm to the Brand”

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It probably took a few minutes to put that list and letter together and click send, but only less than 24 hours to take what might be a serious beating for it.

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For a Company who proposes they can protect you from Chinese Intellectual Property theft, could the name “Yellow Brand Protection” be any more racially insensitive? tsk tsk Looks like they can’t even protect themselves. What a great reference for their next Customer! This is a real Resume Builder in their portfolio …DeRp

Newest C&D letter being written at VGOD HQ… "Dear Yellow Brand, Please Cease and Desist “protecting” our Brand!

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“Yellow Brand Protection We stop at Zero” LoLoL

stopping at zero? At least these two geniuses in Mom’s basement have a crystal ball… well maybe after the Lawsuit they’ll be stopping at a negative number :sunglasses:

sorry I’ve gone down the Rabid Hole

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