Edit: whoops, should have read the other replies first.

(I could be wrong about the details, since the court docs are not loading for me. I will edit the "parts in quotes" about the two options if I am way off base.)

"Please do not confuse someone who would rather not waste their time and money on legal matters with someone who cannot afford a lawyer. I was born wealthy; I have an obscene trust fund. I assure you that if required, I will obtain the best legal representation for corporate litigation in the Silicon Valley." (Brian's quote from the 3rd email)

"I know you want to use the name iOS, and to ensure that we can defend our mark in court in the future, we need you to license the mark IOS from us for $1." Who wouldn't take that? Do you really think a successful business can be run while valuing your marks at a dollar? It's business.

But just so we're not arguing about the specifics of trademark law: I think you should throw away all your legal rights to a trademark if retaining those rights means you have to be a bad person.

In this case where both names are common English phrases, I think it's especially shady to be so aggressive about enforcement. I doubt either would win against the other, in fact, but I don't think it should come to that either.

But fine, let's leave the legal questions aside since neither of us is an expert.

I don't concur with your assessment of the ethicalities of the situation. Who's Here was up first and Hamachek knew about it. He could have picked a clearly different name, but did not.

Hope that helps.

That's noble, but bad for business. When you have to make a tough call like this at the helm of your own company, if you come from the heart (like that attitude), you're going to lose. It's unfortunate that the world has developed the way it has, but it's also just about impossible for a tactical shift at this point: heart has no place in business, and those who can successfully use their heart in business had to be very, very careful in how they did so. And they weren't always the cleanest, either.

I appreciate your honesty and your position here, but "that just isn't the way business works". You'll get taken advantage of, thinking like that, because not everybody has the same heart you do. Sucks, but is.

Could anyone seriously trust these guys with their social graph data after they've pulled a stunt like this? Like you say "It's business". This behavour seems to be a clear indication of how this "business" will treat _your_ rights when they think their business would be more profitable if they ignore them.

While their success in getting through to summary judgement seems to indicate they've won this battle, I hope in the longer term that the repercussions for Bryant Harris & Stephen Smith & Synerge Tech Solutions & Lightbank make the outcome of "the war" somewhat less attractive for them. I know those four names have been added to my list of people who've demonstrated a failure to conduct business honorably, and any decisions or advice I make about whether to use or recommend services they're involved with will be informed by their previous behaviour.

To the degree that the business is selling trademark licenses, a case for extremely vigorous pursuit of questionable infringement is justified. On the other hand, if one's business is software development, it is hard to see the described actions as much more than a distraction.

So is posting a 'help I'm being attacked' article but failing to mention you built your app as a demo for WhosHere hoping they would buy it from you as their windows client seems more than a bit misleading.

Nobody involved in this dispute is the first person to think of displaying a list of people that are nearby, and "who's here" and "who's near me" are both equally generic descriptions of this functionality.