[RML] Names, trademarks and web pages -Reply

Michael Adams (MAdams at fmsmeng.com)
Thu, 05 Feb 1998 17:53:00 -0500

rhonda...you've entered a gray area of internet law. i'm not a lawyer, but
a good friend of mine is and recently we had a lengthy conversation
about internet law along similar lines to the question you just asked and i
think my findings may be germane to your question here. i think the best
advice is to document any contact that you've had with the natural
terrarium folks if you decide to change the name back to what it once
was. you might even include a disclaimer (not that they're worth
anything in reality) to show that you made a prudent effort to make sure
you weren't infringing on their name. but i probably wouldn't take my
word on it. from what i understand, there are web sites dedicated to
internet "laws" that you should be able to find pretty easily.

interestingly, there's a lot of debate going on regarding the availability of
mp3 audio files. basically, you can compress a three to five minute song
to three to five megs, which makes them emailable and they don't take up
a lot of space on your hard drive. once you get to the point where
you've accumilated around eighty or so you can burn a cd and voila,
you're own mix. but i digress, this aint no mp3 list

cheers

Mike
(same mike, different addy -- can't keep the .edu forever since i'm no
longer a student, although it still works. luckily i have one at work.)

>>> Rhonda Wilson <rhondawi at sprynet.com> 02/05/98 04:37pm >>>
This is maybe a stupid question but here goes.

I called my web site Natural Aquariums because that's what I do at
least that is what I called them. But there is a company called
Natural Aquarium and Terrarium (http://www.nataq.com/) so I switched
my name and asked them if this would be a problem and they never
replied. So I would like to call my web site Natural Aquariums again
but I don't want to get in trouble, especially with this terminolgy
being used all over. For example there is also Nature Aquarium World.

Any ideas? Do you all think I will be safe using Natural Aquariums, if
someday I actually make this in to more of a business (I do try to
sell some stuff now) it will get ugly later? Anyone know where my
standing is here? Should I just get a new name, I thought of Glass
Gardens or Aqua Gardens but a search on the web shows a lot of sites
with those sorts of names too.

Rhonda Wilson

ALA Convention 1998
April 24-26 in Akron Ohio

ALA - http://petsforum.com/ala/ PGI - http://petsforum.com/
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/RhondaWilson/