ayusaf

Thanks! I also love that book, as it's full of practical advice. I really recommend reading Contagious if you haven't because it really made me realise how important all the offline stuff is for a tech startup :)

Thanks for your reply. In answer to some of your questions - no, this letter is not from a lawyer, it's from the company's chairman. Their trademark was registered in 2010 and I can not confirm if they have the resources for an infringement suit, although I do know that they have not actually launched their product as yet.

I appreciate that the information is a bit limited but my intention is not to publicly name and shame so I have tried not to divulge too many specific details. I can say though, that what we share in common is the word 'owl' in our names, we are both building apps for audio content (in their case audiobooks) and in our case radio programmes / podcasts. Our owl logos also look very distinctly different.

The company who is pursuing us, from their letter, seem to feel that we should rebrand and I am wondering if they really have any grounds or are just being a bit pushy. As you mentioned there are several trademarks for 'AMD' in the US and I've found there are also several trademarks that include the word 'owl'. Of course if we had unknowingly named and branded our company exactly the same name as another registered trademark then we would be seriously considering a change. I am not convinced if it is warranted in this case though.

I see you have experience of the 'picking your battles' thing and that is exactly what we need to do. This has been very useful and given me valuable perspective. I'll research as necessary and definitely post back here as to how we proceeded.

Yes, they do have registered trademarks. Do you think we should rebrand even if we both have different names (with only thw 'owl' part in common), different branding (colour, design etc) and a completely different owl mascot / logo?

For us wisdom is a positive connotation and also due to the owl's hearing range: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl#Hearing

But, that's probably a bit off topic - our name and the mentioned company's name has the word 'owl' in common, in our case alongside the word 'super' in their case alongside other word(s) so I am investigating how much, if at all, there are any breach of trademark grounds here.

Thanks - you make good points here. Weighing up the importance of our name / brand is definitely worth thinking about. Unlike the company approaching us, luckily we haven't spent all our efforts on branding, registering trademarks etc!.... since we believe in working in a lean, agile and speedy way up until launch (having learnt from previous failures!) we are open to change things when necessary. We need to establish how much of a case there is here, as you've mentioned.

Thanks, Milly. I think the tricky bit would be how to establish if our logo / name is close enough to theirs to breach their trademarks. I wonder if there are any guidelines on this or if it is based on opinions / review?

At this stage I am looking for general advice, as you mentioned and the replies posted here, including yours, are useful.

Hi, You'll find all the details on the meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/Mavericks-Breakfast/

In general around 8 people meet up for breakfast and after a brief intro each person can put forward a specific problem / dilema they would like to round table with the rest of the group.

The idea is that all the variety of experiences and backgrounds of the group can help solve problems quickly or think about them in a different way.

No particular skills are required but everyone attending has to have started or be knee deep in working on a business / startup.

We meet in a coffee shop in central London (close to Farringdon).

Hope this helps... it'll be great to see you there.

A

Thanks Zeeshan - I've e-mailed you.

Thanks for this link - it's super useful :)

Really good examples - I agree there's more we can do, in terms of content, on our FB page.

We can give samples of playlists to spark conversation and also as a taster of what to expect on Super Owl. Our editorial team put together the playlists so it's going to be a balancing act of how much we want to give away for free as the Super Owl service will be available for a small monthly subscription when we launch.

We've been quite active on our blog, writing our own articles so it sounds like more of this type of thing can also be done on our FB page.

Interesting - so you're saying that FB targeted ads are effective.... I have no experience of running any FB ads,so it may be worth investigating - thanks!

Yes, we have and you're right it's a really good start :)

"We pick the best content and get it to you" - that's right! We have an editorial team for quality filtering and we're starting with content that would appeal to a certain type of person rather than categories or genres. In the same way that TED Talks may appeal to a certain type of person rather than someone who is looking for content on a niche category. Later, when we have more resources we'll look in to categories and if they may be of use.

I worked on another startup in the same space and one of the main reasons that we stopped was because analytics showed that our users liked having good things to listen to rather than personalising, browsing by category or by mood. Creating a trusted channel and things that make listening easy (as in when you're rushing out in the morning to work) is the focus for now.

I'm going to have to now go and make stuff!... a tiny team means lots of work and less time on HN ;)

Perhaps the Super Owl will grow up to be as smart as this owl too :)