Why does that require anything other than enforcement of existing trademark law?
Many restaurants would prefer not to spend this money just to prevent unauthorized listings.
They’d rather delegate the responsibility of preventing unauthorized listings to the state attorney who has more resources and expertise.
Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and desist for free. The only time you need a lawyer is if they refuse and you want to sue them. If the court rules in your favor, you can even sue them for the legal costs and costs of damages.
Enforcing it is free if your time is free.
In the end it's less work for the investor-backed business, since with the C&D route they would need to register domains or create pages for restaurants that don't want the service only for their (very expensive!) legal department to receive a letter so they can delete everything.
I mean just send an email to the restaurant so they can submit an authorization beforehand... tell them the advantages, let them make the decision...
But suppose we indulge your fantasy. A restaurant owner, who is already incredibly busy, decides to figure out how to register a trademark and sends the cease and desist. The venture-backed startup's in-house counsel looks at it, sees that it was written by an amateur, and just laughs. Now what?
Are you proposing to do the work of writing up and sending C&Ds for these restaurants personally gratis? That's the only way it's "free".
(And as I understand it, you get some trademark rights just by establishing a business, so you don't have to register the trademark to sue UberEats or Grubhub or whoever)
Purporting to represent someone elses business is an egregious infringement of trademark.
1) Allow both private and public right-of-action for most laws. If the AG is busy, I should be able to sue. If I can't afford to sue, an AG should be able to take it up on my behalf.
2) Go back to circa 1800 style courts, where you don't need a lawyer to represent you. You both make your case to the judge. Not too much procedure. Perhaps extending small claims court up to $100,000 would do much of the same.
Also nothing is stopping the AG of the state from forming a Fraud case agaist the major players.
The excuse of "well the courts cost too much money" is not abated by creating even more complex laws that will still require an expensive lawyer to enforce
in reality this law is designed to protect those companies that already made billions on abusing trademark laws by making it seem like what they did was legal, a "loophole" in the law that is now "closed" for new competitors
Companies shouldn't have to manufacture lawsuits every time a hostile third party wants to screw over their customers.
This law is both pro-business AND pro-transparency.
If I opened up a shop in the mall with giant lit white Apple logos, the fact that I sold genuine Apple product inside would not absolve me of trademark infringement.
(Trademark violations are more than just counterfeit items.)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/09/pirate-trader-...
Against an adversary with deep pockets like a corporation, you can lose even if you win. This is how patent trolls extort companies, litigating a patent suite is usually a seven figure endeavor. And there's no guarantee you win. It's cheaper to pay the licensing free from the trolls, who are smart enough to make sure it's always less than the cost of litigating.
Doing the former is working two full-time jobs, as is.
Many of your rights in the US are directly tied to your financial resources, not only in the sense that you have the resources to litigate or absorb failed litigation but even in the sense that those with massive financial resources essentially buy their own rights through legislation.
Let's not pretend the justice system doesn't have underlying flaws that allow justice to skew one way or another from money alone because it does. If you're on trial for a serious offense, you're probably not going to use a public appointed attorney if you can avoid it because we know how the legal system works and how financial incentives will attract better legal representation in the private sector than those for public appointment.
This idealized and fictionalized system where I can walk into a court of law and defend myself or use a public appointed counsel and 'win' as long as I've done nothing illegal or unjust is a laughable joke for many legal battles, especially those of more significance.
1. The legal system is a direct product of legislature, as are the rules that it enforces.
2. It is absolutely the legislature's responsibility to step into systemic, one-to-many disputes, especially when there is a gross power imbalance between the two sides.
Also, many restaurants can't get a trademark. My favorite local place is "Joe's Pub" but I don't imagine that's a unique name.
The usual exception are the franchise operations (mcdonalds, BK, subway, kfc, ...) because these are thought from the start to be exclusive.
That is all this does, it protect GrubHub, DoorDash and other large players from competition
They are not "new entrants" in the market, they have a network effect now so it will be preferable to them to sign exclusive deals with restaurants to further ensure there can not be any competition
Sometimes it really is a loophole that is now closed, and the government can’t subsequently dissolve all companies they’ve used it, they can only ask companies to stop.