Date:         Sun, 16 Oct 2005 11:22:31 -0600
Reply-To:     jimt <camper@TACTICAL-BUS.INFO>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         jimt <camper@TACTICAL-BUS.INFO>
Subject:      Re: Volkscafe.com is now Van-Café.com
In-Reply-To:  <002301c5d208$cb96b4b0$6501a8c0@noner4688xfd1h>
Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

Havent been to their site for a long time.
But here are some questions...
Did they use the VW logo on the site?
Was something used that connected the name to the VW logo and hence a legal
watering of mark issue?
Was there any pics or graphic work that may suggest VW link?

There are a lot of things other than just the name.  I have one of their
legal brief things around here somewhere.  It is about 30 pages of extremely
detailed material that would take a lawyer to read.
The word volks is in many hobbyist sites that do no commercial business but
are VW related. .  Many of these will bear the "approved" site logo on them.

Years back on a site I assisted with we got a letter and emails advising us
of problems. I was able to get in touch with someone at VWOA that actually
took some time to explain the issue we were having.  All the paperwork was
to tell me that I was being advised that I was awful close to a line and to
tell me where the lines were.  And then the fun part. She had a copy of the
same forms and stuff and didn¹t understand a word of them either.  we pulled
all of the VW logos and changed photos of vehicles to more stylized and
generic art work.  VW was very happy with it and we even got a thank you
letter.  At the same time is when vw went to a contractor to do that work
which was only interested in raping and pillaging.  They fired them after a
couple of very embarrassing years.

When vw first came out with enthusiats waivers submitted both of my current
sites to VW and was hit by their robots about 4 times a month for the next 3
months.  At the time I had a parts sales section set up on one of them (it
was actually just a dummy to see what they would say).  I was approved on
one site and got a email with a link to a large pdf file.  On the other site
I was advised that I needed to drop/change the one page of the sales area.
(I had a vw logo and other stuff on that page.) and provided a link to a
different very large pdf file.  This file had an advisory of problems found
with a commercial site.  I dropped that page and advised them at a link.
About a month later I get an email showing approval but advising that the
logo use on the front page had to be well separated from the sales area.
Never have put the little logos up.

Volks in the name by itself should not have gotten VW excited.  That it was
commercial would have gotten a closer look.  Then what did it find on the
closer look?

jimt


On 10/15/05 10:19 PM, "Stan Wilder" <wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET> wrote:

> Google immediately found Results 1 - 10 of about 2,100,000 for volks. (0.20
> seconds)
> Looks like VW has a few law suits to file.
> They'll probably only sue people that appear to be having some success using
> the name.
> 
> Stan Wilder
> Engine Ceramics
> 214-352-4931
> www.engineceramics.com