October 21, 2001
Subject: Re: "Shops At Willow Bend" sues me
I'm curious...
Throughout the entire proceedings described on the
complaint site, Taubman's lawyers consistently state that
the trademark they are defending is "THE SHOPS AT WILLOW BEND".
How is this incorporated into "shopsatwillowbend.com"? A
subset of the full mark is incorporated, but not the full
mark. If they can claim ownership of all subsets of their
mark, does this mean that all of the following are now owned by them?
he shops at willow bend
the shops
willow bend
the
at
To incorporate their mark, I would expect to see a name
such as "shopattheshopsatwillowbend.com".
Their entire mark is incorporated here, but that is not the
site they are complaining about (if it even exists).
Does their mark include the spaces, or are those extraneous
and ignored?
Of course, I am not a lawyer, and I have been burned by
misunderstanding legalese before. But, I would think they
either own just the mark they claim or they own all
subsets of it. (The ownership of all subsets of the name
is obviously ludicrous, as seen by the examples "the" and "at".)
