Another memorabilia place in a lawsuit

[steve B]

Ok, so they haven't done anything wrong, and it must be a huge nuisance for them, but for some reason I find if mildly amusing. Probably because I worked for a place that was one phone number off of both a taxi service and a motorcycle repair shop and took a few confused calls myself.

http://www.geekwire.com/2011/memory-...m_medium=email

Steve B

[bh3443]

Steve,
Thanks for sharing this link. For over 2 months I have been getting bombarded with emails from classmates.com!
Take it from me, once you get a single email from them, kick it to spam because they are relentless! I've gotten emails pertaining to every Marlboro high School in the country and i went to the one in Mass! The worst emails from them are from ex-g/f's trying to track me down.
Interesting that it's going to court!
Have a great weekend,
Bill Hedin <---- the old man who turns 50 July first!

[2dueces]

My direct line at my office # is one off Wal Mart pharmacy. I field at least 30 calls a week and countless hang ups from mis dials. Total pain in the arse to be in the middle of something, walk back to my office and have someone ask if this is WalMart. We have a standard we answer the phone with stating the name of the company and such. No one listens. All I hear after my spiel is "Is this Wal mart?" I'd like to rip the phone off the wall at times.

[steve B]

I'm ok with the people that are at least polite when they've misdialed. Many asked if they had the right # and some didn't. Those people were given the right number and most apologized for the wrong number. I always said it was ok we all misdial now and then. But......

Some of the Taxi people used to get furious with us for not being the taxi company. For a brief time I'd tell the grouchy ones that it wasn't my fault they were too stupid to dial a phone. We got to the point with the taxi people that we started simply saying "ok, we'll be right over" and hanging up.

The motorcycle ones were funnier. One woman called going off about her sons KZX 750 or something. Apparently it hadn't gotten fixed for a couple weeks. When I asked her what a KZX750 was she said "it's a motorcycle you imbecile! " Then I got to tell her that If I was the motorcyle place I wouldn't have answered with a different company name and that maybe she should think about that - And yes, the phrase "you imbecile" got a second use during the same conversation. I kinda felt bad for the motorbike people once she figured out what their number was.

I'm slightly less cranky now.

Steve B

[Vintagedegu]

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[steve B]

I think I'd have tracked him down just to ask about a business like that. Talk about nich markets.

Steve B

[Exhibitman]

Watch the movie Ruthless People for the ultimate in wrong numbers.

http://youtu.be/NpG0hqTt2go

[WhenItWasAHobby]

I've skimmed through the petition. It appears to be an incredibly weak lawsuit in my opinion. They only produced one piece of evidence and good luck proving that the defendant "willfully and intentionally" harmed the plaintiff. See excerpt below from the petition:

On information and belief, defendants have adopted the designation MEMORYLANE in a willful attempt to piggyback off of plaintiff’s good will and reputation in the memorabilia industry, and to divert business away from plaintiff and to defendants

Furthermore the plaintiff will most likely have their own reputation scrutinized and there's been numerous threads about that. Proving damages will be another major hurdle. Finally, if you Google "Memory Lane", there are at least a dozen on-line businesses that use that name in some form. Again a very weak suit in my opinion.

[2dueces]

We thought about doing that too. I'd give my company name---doesn't sound anything like Walmart and finish our standard answer the phone line.
Then they would ask if a prescription for such and such was ready. It's ready come and get it! Or it's on back order. But we couldn't bring ourselves to do it. We politely say, that's 831 maam. (our # is 838) The ones that call back 2 minutes later and ask if it's Walmart again get old, but them again some of them really need their meds and some of them really are old. LOL

[Vintagedegu]

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[WhenItWasAHobby]

Originally Posted by Vintagedegu

Similar, but more idiotic case I read about a couple years ago-

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/15/m...golf-to-exist/

This brings up another interesting issue and that's one of trademarks.

It appears the "Classmates" spin-off business "memorylane.com" has trademark protection by buying pre-existing trademark rights several years before "memorylane Inc.", the auction house did.


http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield...06:m3n81l.2.27

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield...06:m3n81l.2.13


Here's the search summary and there's a bunch of trademarks with that name in some form:

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield...h=Submit+Query