Wednesday July 24, 2002

Oh, the audacity

I got an e-mail today:

Actually, no, you did not think of the name first... I have had the name registered with the U.S. office of copyrights since 1997 as a legal business trademark. I suggest that you not make any more comments without the facts!

Okay, first of all sweetie, if you had Sonafide trademarked in 1997, it means you had 4 years to buy the domain before I did, but chose to rest on your laurels instead. If you want a website, you have every right to grab sonafide.org or .net or .whatever, but you can not have sonafide.com. That was paid for, by me, and I own it. I have owned it for over a year. I did not copy the name from your business, and I thought of this name myself.

Second of all, the U.S. Copyright Office does not handle trademarks. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does. Copyrights have nothing to do with business names. In any case, Sonafide is not the name of any business or organization that I've started; it's the address for my website. I have a question for you, have you ever taken a business ethics class?