A few weeks ago, my mom received a letter from another company (completely unrelated to speech therapy) that said they were going to press charges because she was using the same name as theirs (they are ********* Consulting Services) and demanded she give up client information and disclose how much money she made under “the goodwill of their name.” It definitely has thrown a wrench in my marketing plan but is teaching me a lot about the way businesses run!
We hired a lawyer who said that if we fought them, we’d likely win (they aren’t in the same company class, we have trademarked our name and they aren’t the exact same, and “********” is used in so many other businesses that it’s been diluted). It’s been back and forth between the lawyers but my mom doesn’t want to pay the money to set up a court date, etc… even though we had already bought and printed a brand new sign for the business. They now are asking for us to hand over our domain to them. I’m taking it as a compliment that the work I did for Search Engine Optimization put us on the map more than other ********* businesses! 🙂
I have been putting most of my energy for the thesis into reading up about brand archetypes and how to create a brand that represents what your brand is and brainstorming a new name and new brand “personality” for the business. I’ve also written a few blogs that I plan to post once we have the new domain up and running. My mom is very freaked out by the whole thing and says she’s tempted to go offline altogether. But I think I can come up with something.