Poll: ConFurence trademark protection
Poll Should I Protect the "ConFurence" trademark?
Guiness published their 2008 book and included an entry naming Anthrocon as the largest furry fan group. Unfortunately, they included in their writeup the following text: "Furries, as they are known, meet a confurences and share their love of animal anthropomorphism ( Read more... )
Guiness published their 2008 book and included an entry naming Anthrocon as the largest furry fan group. Unfortunately, they included in their writeup the following text: "Furries, as they are known, meet a confurences and share their love of animal anthropomorphism ( Read more... )
As a legal sidenote, I had Mark sell me any interest in the name "ConFurence" for any and all events or products following April 6, 1999 for One Dollar, and he retained the rights to merchandise printed for earlier events so that he could continue to sell backstock of TShirts and Souvenir Programs.
I was the first to register the name as a service mark (with the state of California in 1999 and with the USPTO in 2002) and I used that name as a DBA while I was running ConFurence.
IF Mark and Rodney (or ANYONE else, for that matter) were to incorporate a proper business entity for the purpose of running a Southern California based anthropomorphic fandom convention, then I would GLADLY license the name to them (Trademarks can't be sold, they can only be either abandonded or licensed)... but if you know So Cal Fandom like I do, you know that will probably never happen.
In the meantime, if anyone does any sort of lookup in legal registration databases on the name ConFurence, the only result is my name. Therefore, if someone doing business as ConFurence creates a serious liability, some eager attorney might try to attach my assets, even if I was never involved.
IF I were to license the name, I'd have verbiage in the license aggreement that indemnifies me (protects me from liability) regarding the use of the service mark.
If I abandon the mark, I might still be the subject of future litigation if someone else grabs it and creates a liability.
Does that make more sense? See my dilemma?
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So again my advice would be to let it go and be flattered you were a part of something that made it into the vernacular. That's kinda cool.
And yes I do understand what and how you got the ConFurence name. We know the same people. I got several version of the story.
As for you killing CF....no...it was already dying and saving it would have taken a minor miracle. You just resuscitated it for a bit.
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