It's a clever concept, but I'm leery of having someone send a letter on my behalf to someone.
You all haven't trademarked the idea, have you? I think I'll just write a few of these up myself and send them out.
You all haven't trademarked the idea, have you? I think I'll just write a few of these up myself and send them out.
Agreed. I don’t know what other junk mail will be included, nor how my recipient’s data will be used.
the tinfoil hat probably isn't warranted in this case, but as a general principle, I try to let my friends make their own decisions around privacy.
No they are not. I don't know why you and people keep telling me this. You can try to look up my address and if you're doing it on the internet with some stupid private, non-governmental institutions and data brokers that collected data without my consent, you're likely to only find a bunch of addresses associated with my name that are NOT actually where I live.
Just look at OP's comment history, one example:
> I absolutely love making chrome extensions - my very first one was creating an extension for tinder.com that would swipe left on anyone with the first name Chad
All they require here is your name and email, and the recipient's name and address. Both are (probably) public somewhere and in combination are almost certainly still worthless (or certainly worth less than the postage they're giving to you for free)
It won't have the same effect if you just download a PDF, print it out, and mail it in a generic envelope with a handwritten address on it.
> We may share Your information with Our business partners to offer You certain products, services or promotions.
Which somewhat takes the shine off this in my opinion.
(That, and also: How hard is it to post a letter yourself?)
I don't think that word means what you think it means...
I'm not OP, and I'm no lawyer, but I'm sure you're free to try this concept for yourself.
Three ways to protect IP
Trademark is for logos and names Parents are for methods and inventions Copyright is for works of art and writing
They might be able to trademark the phrase "continue and persist", but it's not likely. If they had they would have put a little TM or (r) next to it.
It's not sufficiently original to qualify for copyright protection.
And it's so far from being patentable I hope I don't have to explain why.
- a trademark may be claimed with TM even if not registered. A trademark registered with, and accepted by, USPTO should use circle R.
- these folks hold the copyright on their specific letter. Avoid infringement (and potential negative legal ramifications) by not reproducing their letter. This is not limited to photocopying a physical paper. Retyping verbatim will infringe.
- the concept itself cannot be protected with existing (US) intellectual property law.
- The service name “continue and persist” is probably trademarkable by them if they wanted (assuming it’s not already in use). And as you point out, formal registration wouldn’t be necessary, although it does come with various benefits. Doing so could block someone from creating a similar service with the same or confusingly similar name.
- For copyright, reproduction doesn’t have to be verbatim to infringe. The standard is typically substantial similarity. So you couldn’t just change a few words here or there in the letter.
- Publicly disclosed concepts can be protected under US law, but you have to go through patent law. Haven’t done a prior art search, but seems unlikely that there’s much patentable here. There is also the section 101 (abstract idea) issue, but that is hard to evaluate without looking at the exact patent claims at issue.
I would say the same thing about a lot of things the USPTO has handed out patents for. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if someone could obtain a patent for this, if the patent application was written the right way. Whether such a patent would hold up in court is an entirely different question.
I appreciate the clarification in this and the comments below, but yeah, it was meant to be tongue in cheek.