Did they actually try and hijack their identity? Hijack to me implies actively trying to steal their reputation. Sounds more like the name wasn't particularly unique and they independently decided they wanted to use that name.
- They started as small firm in France, registered there the trademark Deepki, unrelated to software.
- I created Deepkit around 2018, trademarked in US and EU with software category.
- They raised substantial amount of money around 2022 $150M
- Board/Shareholders likely decided that the brand is important
- They tried to register the US brand under software category. The USPTO declined automatically because of "likelihood of confusion"
- They reached out to me wanting a "Consent and Coexistence Agreement", I told them not for free, to which they never responded with an offer.
- They tried to register in EU later, which I tried to block under the same "likelihood of confusion" ground.
- They started fighting with legal terms to get my brand deleted.
- They succeeded.
It's not necessarily only their fault that the trademark is gone now. As I just learned, the EU requires very strict rules of proving you have legit users. I couldn't convince them. Maybe due to skill issues, missing data, or technicalities. The biggest danger is now though that they can get me deleted from the internet entirely once the protection is gone. It requires just one corporation to decide to start come after you with a cancellation process, and you are done.
Did they actually try and hijack their identity? Hijack to me implies actively trying to steal their reputation. Sounds more like the name wasn't particularly unique and they independently decided they wanted to use that name.
it's more like this:
- They started as small firm in France, registered there the trademark Deepki, unrelated to software.
- I created Deepkit around 2018, trademarked in US and EU with software category.
- They raised substantial amount of money around 2022 $150M
- Board/Shareholders likely decided that the brand is important
- They tried to register the US brand under software category. The USPTO declined automatically because of "likelihood of confusion"
- They reached out to me wanting a "Consent and Coexistence Agreement", I told them not for free, to which they never responded with an offer.
- They tried to register in EU later, which I tried to block under the same "likelihood of confusion" ground.
- They started fighting with legal terms to get my brand deleted.
- They succeeded.
It's not necessarily only their fault that the trademark is gone now. As I just learned, the EU requires very strict rules of proving you have legit users. I couldn't convince them. Maybe due to skill issues, missing data, or technicalities. The biggest danger is now though that they can get me deleted from the internet entirely once the protection is gone. It requires just one corporation to decide to start come after you with a cancellation process, and you are done.
> They reached out to me wanting a "Consent and Coexistence Agreement", I told them not for free, to which they never responded with an offer.
Man, imagine if you had asked for a thousand euros as consideration.
3 replies →
> - They tried to register in EU later, which I tried to block under the same "likelihood of confusion" ground.
I might have misread - did they initially try and trademark "Deepki" or "Deepkit" when you attempted to block it?
8 replies →
> The biggest danger is now though that they can get me deleted from the internet entirely once the protection is gone.
You still have the US trademark, right? Unless the domain is .eu i dont see how that would happen.