Popped my cherry. Got my first C&D

efeezy

efeezy

Well-known member
Oct 5, 2007
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Got a C&D in my inbox this morning from an intellectual property attorney in Canada. Seems I had a link in the "My Friends" section of one of my blogs that was using an anchor text that was a trademarked term in Canada, but it wasn't linking to the trademarked owners website. So told me I had 48 hours to remove it or else. It's stupid because the anchor was "Boaters Exam", which seems like a very generic term that would be difficult to trademark.

So I yanked the link. I could care less really, someone bought that link years ago and probably doesn't even remember it.

Not extremely exciting, but it's always fun to read lawyer jargon & threats first thing on a Monday morning.
 


Just curious, but if it's trademarked in Canada, does that mean jack shit in the US? How can an independent blogger be sued over something as (seemingly) arbitrary as anchor text? I have a hard time believing that would hold up in any court. Granted, it's not worth the hassle of arguing, but still a pretty ridiculous claim.
 
fucking ridiculous claim but these lawyers are trained assholes and they get paid for coming out for all this bullshit anyway. They also need to hustle someday afterall.

u did a wise thing.
 
1) The company is going after all their competition's backlinks
or
2) You're stealing some of their business/hurting their rankings.

Either situation, I'd respond back saying that you removed the link out of good faith and ask them if they'd like to pay you to put it back up and have it link to their site ;) You might even provide some historical CTR data.
 
holy crap, I have never heard of a C&D for backlink anchor text. This is just getting out of hand, soon your going to see C&D for just using a word or phrase in a article or blog post.

Also what Rexibit said, they must be scared people ranking for their term.
 
I shot the attorney an email saying that I removed the link, bla bla, and that if his clients wanted to have a link on my site with that anchor text, I'd be happy to do it for $500. Maybe I'll make a little something on this whole thing.
 
Nice Congrats on the C&D. I remember my first, it was a company that does designs for websites, and that since I brought a site that was using a design by them and since I brought the site I have to pay them I licensing fee since on there website they have it set up so that everything they design they own and "license" it to the people that order the designs. I told them to fuck off in my reply email and then on the phone when they called me to tell me to take it down. Then I told my hosting company to expect a lawsuit from me if they take my site down since the design in question was done by this company before they decided to license everything they do.
 
I remember my first.. never got to me personally, but I seen it in the "extra" mailbox I have on some dirt road being used as my "address".

Was from Harpo Studio's and their lawyer team..
 
turbolapp said:
Someone needs to issue a C&D for all these stupid C&D's. Abusing the system.
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Yep, it's too easy to frighten those of us who do not know the law. Abusing this system should carry a penalty. I'm not sure whether or not you have the right to use words found in a dictionary as a link - but you fucking should. To balance the system we need to fine lawyers for issuing baseless C&D's.
 
Some of your guys should really take a few more steps though and prevent yourself from getting the c&d. Im sure lots of people will say, just do it from behind your LLC, etc.. blah blah blah. But Id rather take it a step further and prevent myself from even getting it, by not letting them find me in the first place to send it to me.

You never know what your gonna get in trouble for these days, so I pretty much use a pre paid card to buy all my hosting and domains, using fake info to purchase them and also priv. whois on top of the fake info for the domain.

I try to buy from companies overseas, but this isnt fail safe 100% of the time, but does add a layer to the mix. For example, buy some of your domains and hosting from china and see if a c&d goes far there.

The very worst, the company your using folds over ( moniker, godaddy, namecheap, etc ) and yanks the domain or hosting from you. But you didnt get bothered with the c&d or legal fees if it came down to it. You can always buy another domain/build another site when its took down, if it ever does get took down.

The only other downfall they can get is your money trail. This can also be layered by using a bank account owned by an offshore LLC. So if they pull records from Adsense, a CPA network, or someone else.. its a dead end there too.
 
Magic Hat said:
Just curious, but if it's trademarked in Canada, does that mean jack shit in the US?
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I remember the time I was contacted by someone in the Canadian Government for using their Wordmark:

images


Apparently you can use the maple leaf and flag images, but not the Wordmark. I tried to play that shit about "I'm American, your laws are irrelevant to me" etc, but she said something that must've convinced me because I backed down like a little girl and removed it.
 
eliquid said:
Some of your guys should really take a few more steps though and prevent yourself from getting the c&d. Im sure lots of people will say, just do it from behind your LLC, etc.. blah blah blah. But Id rather take it a step further and prevent myself from even getting it, by not letting them find me in the first place to send it to me.

You never know what your gonna get in trouble for these days, so I pretty much use a pre paid card to buy all my hosting and domains, using fake info to purchase them and also priv. whois on top of the fake info for the domain.

I try to buy from companies overseas, but this isnt fail safe 100% of the time, but does add a layer to the mix. For example, buy some of your domains and hosting from china and see if a c&d goes far there.

The very worst, the company your using folds over ( moniker, godaddy, namecheap, etc ) and yanks the domain or hosting from you. But you didnt get bothered with the c&d or legal fees if it came down to it. You can always buy another domain/build another site when its took down, if it ever does get took down.

The only other downfall they can get is your money trail. This can also be layered by using a bank account owned by an offshore LLC. So if they pull records from Adsense, a CPA network, or someone else.. its a dead end there too.
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That's a lot of fucking work to prevent a C&D regarding a Boaters Exam link you made $50 from ;-)

I get what you're saying... but you must REALLY be doing some hot shit to have to go through all of this. Not sure if I ever want that hot of shit.

My first C&D was a month ago... and I deserved the shit out of it. All cleared up now though.
 
You wouldnt be doing this for 1 anchor link you made $50 from for sure.

You would be doing this as an overall strategy, not for placing 1 link on your site.

Takes 1 trip to the grocery store while your getting groceries to pick up a prepaid card for $100. - Time lost = 0. I was there buying food anyways. Is it extra work, well maybe its an extra arm curl to pick it up off the rack...

No extra time to buy domain from offshore or buy server/vps offshore then it does to buy onshore. Maybe takes a couple queries on Google to find a host located in Netherlands or China. I'll give you 10 minutes on this one though.

Also no time lost in filling out fake whois and then buying private whois on top of it.. its the same time as filling in real info and pressing the "buy priv. whois" option on something like namecheap.

So not sure what extra time you referring too, unless your trying to count the domain register taking your name away from you and your host taking down your site if it even gets that far. All the years Ive been doing this, it never gets to that.

As far as time lost, virtually none. As far as work.. none really. Go to the store to buy food once a month and pick up another card and pay your hosting bill with it.
 
If the offshore bank is the hassle for you, just take a trip to Hong Kong or somewhere nice and look into setting up a company there. Its not that hard really most of the time. You can outsource it all to legal professionals ( dont just pick anyone though ). However, I rec. that you go there yourself, find out the info and implement.

Once they company is up, the bank account is not too far away. choose your country wisely though...

I don't know if the loophole is closed yet, but even something like a Delaware LLC is worthwhile, they had it set up that a Delaware LLC was totally anonymous as you could set one up without giving up members/managers names/addys. at that point its just getting a bank account set up.
 
what rexbit said...

Be friendly and accommodating.
I got a CnD for a site that wasnt cashflowing... they mentioned they will compensate for time to remove.... i removed... pushed the domain to them.. then sent follow up email. They sent me $500. True Story bro.
 
Question: in cases like this, where a supposed C&D is sent by email, can you safely ignore it until it is sent to you via Certified Mail?
 
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