I have been reading this thread and getting more and more worked up about what is happening.
On a professional level, I have been involved in copyright infringement issues with another competing organization for infringing on our trademark advertising, trademark names, designation names etc. This came when I served on the board of a professional organization. The offending organization was taking a bully approach with us because they were betting we wouldn't spend the money to legally defend our position. We were a small professional organization which represented quality professionals (not just anyone could belong...you had to meet quality criteria and anyone with a history of client complaints or penalties imposed was not welcome). Our members had the best reputations in the business. They on the otherhand were a big organization, with loads of money, and a massive membership base that had no quality control whatsoever. They were deliberately using versions of our trademarked representations to mislead a consumer into thinking they were dealing with "our" quality members. A bit of a david and goliah dynamic going on. I see similarities in what's happening here. TVillians are all about the integrity, quality, the membership of likeminded individuals and to me, the most important thing...is preserving your good reputations and not letting anyone of "lessor" quality hijack your reputation.
What I learned is that you have to maintain a fairly aggressive campaign to advise the offending party they are infringing on your copyright or trademark and they are to cease immediately.
When the offending parties were unresponsive and deliberately ignored our requests...our lawyers advised us to issue a "News Release" announcing to the public something like this...... that the organization "insert your name here" has become aware that "so and so organization" is using advertising or phrases and representations that we believe to be a violation of our organizations trademark. We believe that these violations are intended to mislead the consumer. We have made numerous attempts to contact this organization to discuss the issue and request they cease the violating activities. They have chosen not to respond and continue with the offending advertising. As such, protecting consumer interests are our highest priority, and we wish to inform our colleagues, consumers and members that we fully intend to deal with these violations with every legal means available.
We will of course, welcome "offending company" to respond to our requests.
For further information, please contact.......
You get the jest. There are many newswire services around and any organization can issue a news release. You see it all the time and it's really inexpensive and I think many are free as the newswire services are all electronic nowadays. It didn't cost us a dime...just had to buy the lawyer a beer to have that discussion (luckily we had a lawyer that didn't charge us full rate all the time because he believed in what we did).
The lawyers philosophy was this, they're big, you're small and we need to be smart about this because you don't want to break the bank in bringing justice. We're now going to shame them into doing the right thing. News releases reach literally millions of canadians and americans via newswire services they belong to. The lawyer felt there was no risk of libel as our attempts at contacting them previously were well documented. Thankfully this got their attention and we won. Now they know we mean business and we will be as irritating and embarrassing as a burning rash if they try this again. Hasn't raised it's ugly head in a while, but we have to watch them constantly through google alerts as was suggested early. I'm no longer involved in that board, but that was only a couple of years ago.
We had a plan B if the news release didn't work as well as we couldn't risk losing our trademarks...it represented everything we were as an organization.
obviously legal advice is always needed before ever issuing things like news releases, but it seems to me you folks have a very strong position on everything your trying to do. You can even vouch for each others pictures....wow!
Without defensive action you can actually lose your rights. I'm speaking from a Canadian perspective and I have no idea if it works the same way in the US with copyrights and trademarks. "You have to protect you marks" is the phrase they use to describe the responsibility to uphold. It seems to me, you folks have done an amazing job at taking the "offensive" on the offending party here. This Dr. Tomato is playing with fire, and he's going to lose because of the passion of this group
If he doesn't intend to put himself out of business, he'll cave and do the right thing one day...as long as you keep making noise. If he continues to do nothing, the noise will kill his business since he is running an internet shop.
Having said all of this, I'm wondering if there is some sort of government consumer affairs or consumer protection agency in the US? You know, a division of the state department or federal government that is there solely to protect the interests of consumers? That was our plan B. If there is such an organization, you may find that they will help your cause. Afterall, each and everyone one of you is a consumer affected by this, and many of you are small business owners that are also impacted by that. These government organizations are there to protect your interests when consumers are having issues with offending organizations. Might be worth checking into this. They have in house lawyers and advocates that are there to fight against bully organizations and help consumers maintain their rights. Your tax dollars pay for this.
Most people are not aware that these goverment organizations exist and are available to you to be your "big brother" so to speak. They might be more than happy to look into this on your behalf and make this stop.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a t-ville member that was also a lawyer, that was willing to donate a couple of hours of pro-bono work to put Dr. Tomato on notice on official legal letterhead. The lawyers I've worked with have been very masterful at writing these types of letters..Brilliant actually...they love to sink their teeth into bully situations and play with them until they give up. It doesn't take a lot of time to do that. I'm definitely no lawyer, but if I were, I'd volunteer my time for you.....LOL Heck if anyone wanted to start a small fund to pay for a couple of hours of legal assistance on this matter, I would even contribute. I'm sure lots of others would too.
I know I'm babbling at this point....but these kind of people pi** me off. Pardon my french. When people like this, that lack ethics and impact good people...pi** me off, I usually make it my mission to teach them a lesson. Phew...hows that for saying what's on someone's mind.
Thanks for listening and keep up the great work. Keep making noise and be that embarrasing rash that will cause this Dr. Tomato to finally step up and do the right thing.