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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Are you aware that someone is selling your books on Kobo with the Standard Ebooks publisher name?

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=standard%20ebooks&ac...

Yes, that's going to happen. The books are in the US public domain and anyone in the US can do anything they want with them, including reselling them. Obviously we are not the ones selling these.

That's fair, but I'd think the issue was less about copyright and more...trademark infringement? Since they're selling as "Standard Ebooks", I think there's reasonable grounds for confusion that someone browsing the Kobo store might see one of the books being offered as coming from you and make a purchase as a kind of donation, thinking that it's going towards SE's upkeep rather than into some random's pocket.

This is a problem Project Gutenberg has had for years, on Amazon and other platforms. It's a game of whack a mole and ultimately not really worth pursuing. As soon as you shut one guy down, another one appears with the same great idea.

In any case almost nobody is buying these anyway, as there are so many other free ebook editions of just about all of these books already.

I'm not a lawyer, but I believe failure to defend a trademark is a great way to lose a trademark.

I'm surprised Kobo doesn't have a list of banned seller names for situations like this. It would take zero effort on their end, and they're clearly opening themselves to liability.

Off to create Amazon and Disney stores over there... /s

I am not a lawyer bit it seems that Standard Ebooks is not a trademark.

The stories may be public domain but your arrangement, and more importantly your trade name are protected. You may not have the desire to take action like a dmca takedown, but you're definitely within your rights to do so.

You can stop the third-party vendor from saying "I am Standard Ebooks", but you can't stop them from referring to the book as coming from Standard Ebooks, because that's true.

That is very sad to see.

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