HN saved us millions; we need to change our name | Hacker News Reader

HN saved us millions; we need to change our name

blog.fromholden.com

129 pointswsul112 comments

I really admired the way the you spoke about the Holden Outerwear company; receiving a C&D is a hard thing, but you handled it in a respectful and classy way by casting in terms of "if this could cause a good company harm then we shouldn't move forward." I don't know if that's on advice of counsel or not, but either way, it comes across well.

Took the words out of my mouth.

It would have been super easy to call them jackasses, ass hats, etc. But, these guys took the high road, linked their site (driving traffic), and even called them rad.

Props to these guys.

Thank you for the support guys. It is definitely a hard thing to experience -- the first reaction was definitely profoundly 'fuck' followed by 'this sucksssss'.

but at the end of the day, these guys have spent a long time building an incredible company, their designs are really awesome, and everything from their videos to their site design just screams 'rad'.

We're really stoked to build a company the way we want to.. making the decisions we feel are right. Yvon Chouinard wrote a book called 'Let My People Go Surfing' that was really inspirational to us.

I don't see how you could think there would be no confusion. Your Kickstarter page shows you offering t-shirts, polos, and hoodies; various types of garments. Holden Outerwear sells t-shirts and hoodies (though no polos); various types of garments as well.

I'd agree with your conclusion if you were a graphic design company or in any other unrelated industry, but the fact that you're selling garments using the name "Holden" and an existing mark holder sells garments using the name "Holden" seems pretty clear-cut to me.

A quick search yields these active trademarks [edit: hopefully these are permalinks]:

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85334319&caseType=SERI...

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78378687&caseType=SERI...

Here's the goods and services covered for the first (word) mark:

  IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: clothing, namely, jackets,
  sweaters, sweatshirts, pants, t-shirts, shirts, vests and
  outerwear, namely, snow pants, snow jackets, snow suits,
  insulated and thermal pants, jackets, and shirts;
  headgear, namely, hats, caps. FIRST USE: 20020000. FIRST
  USE IN COMMERCE: 20020000

The second is the mark in stylized form which is in cursive like yours is.

We definitely should have spent more time looking at it; they do graphic tees but mostly snowboarding jackets. We don't plan to do either.

Either way, the change is under way now, any ideas for names? :)

The Apparel Formerly Known As Holden? :)

AFKAH

Does have a nice ring to it

Fair use with geographic distinction is a complicated topic, with recent court rulings (ie, KP Permanent Make-Up, Inc. v. Lasting Impression I, Inc); we did our best to grok this, but in the end, it simply isn't in anyone's interests to fight.

We are not keen on harming another company to build our own. Our hope was that this would not be the case, as there is very little overlap: Holden Outerwear makes branded t-shirts only, while focusing on Outerwear; we make non-branded shirts.

Let's turn this into a positive, find a great name we all love, and get these shirts made! I'm as eager as all of you for the first run, my closet could use an upgrade.

I challenge you to find a city near Holden, MA that doesn't sound like a menswear company. Sterling, Millbury, Brookfield, Oxford, Webster, Clinton, Boylston, Northbridge, Holliston, Douglas...

Those are some great ideas - any you like specifically?

I'm from Northbridge, MA. The town is also divided up into three villages; Whitinsville, Linwood, and Rockdale (which are also good names).

What are the chances! I am from Whitinsville!

Rockdale would be my choice!

From Holbrook Pond. But I'm just looking at Google Maps. Maybe pick a pond where you'd go swimming, so long as it has something different sounding, like Hatcase Pond.

If your favorite pond was Chemo Pond, lie, or find some other idea.

Every school day for years was spent longing for the warmth of summer, when we would go camping on Chemo Pond with our grandparents. No joke.

We also spent a lot of time on Phillips Lake, Green Lake, and Pistol Lake.

I used to go to a summer camp on Chemo Pond when I was growing up. Not that that's relevant to this conversation, it's just not every day I see a discussion of the area in which I grew up on Hacker News. Nice area. I hope you guys do well.

From Pistol Lake is good.

Seconded. I like just "Pistol Lake"

Have you considered using a name of a beach from Maine? Maybe a beach from your area, or just something with a good name.

Write to me at my HN email address. I have access to some domains and could probably hook you up with something I'm sure.

It's Holden, ME, to be fair.

Holbrook Pond is right there, wonder if that's still sentimental to the foudners.

"Holbrook" is not bad.

http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clothing~d~5/holbrook~b~280...

FromHolden: "the highest quality shirts"

Seems like Holbrook is a nonstarter.

  o Word Mark	HOLBROOK
  o Goods and Services	IC 025. US 022 039. 
  o G & S: men's suits, sportcoats, and slacks. 
  o FIRST USE: 19970201.  
  o FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19970201
  o Mark Drawing Code	(1) TYPED DRAWING
  o Serial Number	74551492
  o Filing Date	July 20, 1994
  o Current Basis	1A
  o Original Filing Basis	1B
  o Published for Opposition	 November 5, 1996
  o Registration Number	2089513


  o Word Mark	HOLBROOK
  o Goods and Services	IC 025. US 039. 
  o G & S: MEN'S AND BOY'S SHIRTS. 
  o FIRST USE: 19391213. 
  o FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19391213
  o Mark Drawing Code	(1) TYPED DRAWING
  o Serial Number	72318672
  o Filing Date	February 7, 1969
  o Current Basis	1A
  o Original Filing Basis	1A
  o Registration Number	0917690
  o Registration Date	August 3, 1971

The only thing I have to say to that is "lol"

You are at an early stage in your startup. A name change would not impact you negatively. In fact, this can be turned into a brilliant PR move if you play your cards right. I love this sort of scenarios, they are just amazing marketing opportunites. Much more for such a great product.

Agree. FWIW, our startup went through a similar early-stage name-change too. The backstory is here: http://willgrant.org/settle-is-now-droplet/

Awesome, reading now. Love the new name.

Thank you. :)

I'm guessing this is actually pretty common. We went through something similar as well:

http://blog.useost.com/2012/10/12/osttoost/

We started as Snapier. Now Zapier. It appears very common.

Love Zapier.

Appreciate the support man!

Hey man, would love any ideas on how to get the word out!

Shoot me an email (profile). Discussing this publicly would reduce the impact of any strategy.

I think has already turned in to a PR move.

Hey guys,

I run an available domain name search tool called Lean Domain Search [1] that might help. I ran a few relevant keywords through the premium version of the site and filtered the results so that you're only seeing the ones that end with these terms (which generally make better small business names). Here are the results:

4,285 results for "outerwear" - http://leandomainsearch.s3.amazonaws.com/-outerwear.txt

3,059 results for "shirts" - http://leandomainsearch.s3.amazonaws.com/-shirts.txt

4,147 results for "menswear" - http://leandomainsearch.s3.amazonaws.com/-menswear.txt

The farther down these lists you go the more brandable the names are. You should be able to find something in these that suit your business well, plus you know that the .com is available too. If you'd like me to run other keywords just drop me a note: matt@leandomainsearch.com.

[1] http://www.leandomainsearch.com

Thanks so much Matt, will check these out. Any ones you like?

The top of the outerwear list gave, to me, quite horrible suggestions. Looking at the very bottom of the list though, provided much better suggestions such as AtlasPeakOuterwear or OpenPlanOuterwear (no limits with open plan).

The way Lean Domain Search works is that it pairs your search term (like outerwear with other keywords commonly found in domain names. Because the results are sorted by how popular the keyword is, the domain names at the top are names you'd often associate with websites such as GoOuterwear, WebOuterwear, etc. As you move farther down the list you get to keywords that are more often used to name small businesses instead of websites.

That would explain why I thought most of the early words were too common and not unique enough.

I had a similar run-in with my first attempt at a music player/streamer, originally called 'musicMe'.

Apparently there's a French music streaming service with the same name [1] and I promptly received an email with an informal C+D from one of the owners regarding that moniker.

I changed it to 'melodyMe', ridiculously similar, but enough to be a separate entity.

The point I make, is maybe you can circumvent without majorly changing your name to a related term, if you're linked to the area. Why not "From Venice"? A Google search shows it pretty clear for use as a startup name.

[1] http://www.musicme.com/

From Venice is great -- it's wide open for domain regs too!

Venice has a lot of cool geo-names close as well. Abbot Kinney is a rad name in itself. Any other ideas down that path?

Kingswood? Commodore?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden

That's exactly what I thought of! Practically an entire generation of Australians owe their existence to the spacious backseat of the Kingswood, so it's a name with pedigree.

Awesome ideas guys! Keep 'em coming!

Yes I saw the original HN thread and figured this was a pun on selling t-shirts out of the back of your car

My immediate thought too .. that said "Kingswood" would actually be a good name for a clothing company. It's related to Holden but not in any way that could possibly breach trademark laws as it's a totally different industry.

(Though GM-Holden do sell apparel .. to bogans)

To be completely honest, I thought this WAS a Holden Outerwear project when I checked it out from your first post. Even the branding looks similar (Holden outwear also frequently uses a handwriting style logo).

I think I saw some Holden Outerwear adwords ads when I googled From Holden, so I guess it makes sense there could be confusion. I'd reach out to the founder there and intro yourself, since you are so close to him geographically.

Definitely will, great suggestion.

Well, thank you for having the decency to post this, and try to find another name in a peaceful manner (even though you do believe you're using the Holden name under fair use - a discussion I don't particularity want to get into). Also, thankfully they had the decency to inform you before taking action, unlike some companies...

Another sign that they have some great guys running their company as well. They definitely could have been much more forceful.

The name Caulfield sounds about right.

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

We tossed around Caulfield -- we like it as well. Another LA designed did a line called 'caulfield preparatory'. Still in the running, for sure - what do you guys think?

Too cute by half. Sorry.

Do like.

The trouble is, it's not something that's immediately spellable (from memory) by someone who hasn't read the book, which limits your potential customers and probably your word of mouth. It would suck if people went to tweet about you and misspelled your URL or name.

Unbeholden - it says we don't take shit from anyone

I really like this name. Thanks for the suggestion!

I would look into the history of your hometown and see if you find a good name there. Here's one link- http://207.56.207.81/geninfo_cumityintst_hldnhistory.htm

Awesome, thanks man! Will check it out.

Sorry to hear about this guys, very unfortunate.

I work over at Google Consumer Surveys and wanted to offer you a coupon to run a free test to gauge opinions on some different names once you have a few options you like.

Shoot me an e-mail and I'll be happy to send it your way.

This could be a perfect application for Google Consumer Surveys. Emailed you.

My train of thought: From Holden --> Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye) --> Books influential to adolescence --> A Separate Peace --> Gene Forrester --> Phineas --> Finny --> uspto.gov --> Live trademark search --> Finnie --> domai.nr --> "phinn.ie" --> back to uspto.gov --> "phinnie" is good to go

phinnie (phinn.ie) one more name to toss in your hat.

Love your correspondence, but changing names is actually par for the course in early startup land. I did the same when we encountered a USPTO trademark objection. Better to drop the name than fight an uphill battle -- better use of your precious money resources.

Besides, think of it this way -- why would you want a name you couldn't get major Google search SEO / a twitter handle, facebook page, and other benefits? Sharing a name with another company is more hassle than its worth, even if there wasn't a trademark conflict.

Some ideas for you. Try reverse names:

Nedloh is Holden backwards. Or your county is Penobscot, which has an interesting (almost) backwards name, minus the P: Tocsbone.

Holden, Maine seems to be on the edge of Bangor. If you wanted to keep things similar you could be "From Bangor". Granted that doesn't have quite as nice a ring. You could find another nearby geographic name that has some meaning to you.

How about Holbrook, which is the name of the pond in Holden.

Holbrook was also the middle school next to ours.

Can you do this for womens clothes too please? I like wearing basics, same as guys do

I don't think it will be possible to pick a name from a list. The name has to resonate with you guys, it has to have the passion that you have - a soul..aka a story that you can get behind.

Hmm..why don't you go back(metaphorically) to Holden, the town, and look at things that inspire you, things that stand for Holden, things that remind you of your time there.

Thats what I would do :)

Edit: if you want to hash out ideas along this type of thinking, feel free to reach out. I love this type of stuff!

Very good points made here, thanks so much for posting them.

From Burton?

Just kidding. But seriously, pay a lawyer to do a trademark search when you decide on your new name. It's fairly cheap and can give you a great peace of mind.

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp

There's a similar online services for UK and EU.

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-text/

http://oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline/RequestManager/en_SearchBasi...

Thing is you need to be able to interpret the results, understand how Vienna Classification works, what the limitations are on others names, et cetera.

In the case at issue I'm surprised that the US trademark system allows a mere geographic location as this seems to lack distinctiveness: The mark has to be an indicator of the originating company and the name of an area, when that area is close or coincident with the companies operation region, tends away from the use of a mark for such purposes.

Perhaps the specific form of the mark is what's registered in which case one may need only use a different presentation of the text, eg different font, to avoid conflict.

Marketing materials that fall in to someone else's registration classification area must be a known case; I'd be surprised if the courts were to follow the line of it being considered infringing as it's clearly not - in the general case - a genuine infringement and the chance of confusion has to infinitesimal.

Keep in mind that a trademark doesn't have to be registered to be valid. So paying a lawyer to search for trademarks in common law usage is always a good idea.

Definitely will!

Just a thought. what about making the change simple...rather than thinking of alternate names, adapt what you have: 'From H'

It allows you to keep your home reference (you know what it means), removes any trade off arguments (there appears to be no other garment manufacturer with that name or anything similar), and asks your audience a question...what's the 'H' stand for?

A question you can then answer. This story's good for PR, so why not roll with it...tell the tale on your future website (sure Holden Outerwear wouldn't mind as they get free publicity/traffic); run campaigns from time to time asking people to select their favourite H & make versions of the top choices; create ranges using different H's for different seasons etc. (doesn't have to mean lots of text on the t-shirts...this could be on the labels to make them limited editions).

The 'H' becomes whatever your audience want it to be. Creating discussion about you amongst your early adopter audience who want to find out more.

As I said...just a thought. Your article was a nice read, and your story is a good one. Wish you all the best with it.

Call them. Holden Outerwear. Not their lawyers. They may have no idea whatsoever that their lawyers are doing this. Even if they do, they are not hearing the story of how awesome you guys are being.

Call them and tell them that there are no hard feelings and invite them out for beers.

I feel your pain. I've been right where you are.

You're definitely right here -- I'll be doing this. Thanks so much for the comment.

"Nameless"

Not kidding, I think that'd be a cool name.

Do you think? To me, it feels like this have been done a million times before... "the band without a name" etc.

My first impression would be: "no creativity whatsoever" - most of the other options pitched in this comment section so far sound better IMHO.

This video helped me when naming my company: http://youtu.be/blTOv3oXdbk?t=1m25s

It may seem like an icky marketing video at first but there's some good stuff in there.

Hey, isn't that David DeAngelo from Double your Dating video, pickup artist dude.

You might also try running a contest at NameStation. They're cheap and you'll get hundreds of name ideas and their respective available domains:

http://namestation.com/

Not From Bangor 3 Holdin' On 3 Hole Den Muskrat Falls Nedloh Morf Between Three Ponds Upper Right Corner From Maine Davis Fields Bangor's Three Somewhere In Maine By Fields' Pond

I like that last one because of the ambiguity of the apostrophe, a question which can never be resolved because no-one can really be sure whether such a name comes from someone named Fields or from its location near some fields.

Lot's to choose from. Think of a logo to go with the name and choose the one that provides the best combo of name and graphical device.

Linefeeds don't work. Let me say that again with some commas: Not From Bangor, 3 Holdin' On, 3 Hole Den, Muskrat Falls, Nedloh Morf, Between Three Ponds, Upper Right Corner, From Maine, Davis Fields, Bangor's Three, Somewhere In Maine, By Fields' Pond

FWIW I backed your project, then promptly forgot the name of it. This is a good opportunity to come up with something more memorable :)

"From H, with L" maybe?

To keep with the theme you've worked with thus far, you might use a name still closely associated with your hometown, such as Holbrook, Mann Hill, etc.

The impact on your company ethos would be relatively small, and there does seem to be a fair number of pleasant names in the geographical area.

I'd really like to stay with a name associated with where we grew up - there have been some great ideas here that I wouldn't have ever thought of!

>>We’d really like it to be in some way connected to our mission — to craft the very best version of everything we make. To build with a minimalist aesthetic, and deliver quality at a fair price, directly to our customer.

Holden doesn't convey this.

If you are looking for a domain to go with it, may I suggest: fixel, gothx, syndi, or vouge ? They are all free to use if you support open source. Contact me holden @ myusername dot org

We definitely support open source. I'm very active in the Chef / DevOps communities, and have been using/supporting OSS for over 10 years. The first iteration of our storefront was built using a 31 line chef recipe, rails, spree, nginx, unicorn, and postgresql.

So do you like any of the names I suggested? You can use one for FREE! Check out OpenDomain - we have given domains like Drupal.com, OsCon.com, schema.org, openajax.org and recently webplatform.com

You might want to consider buying the rights to the backward version of holden. http://nedloh.net/

From the title, I thought that it was HN's fault that you received a cease and desist letter. (Which it is not.)

Ah, no not at all! It was our fault, HN saved us a bunch of time and money -- I'm glad we are making the change now versus six months down the road after we made print collateral, labels, etc.

I like the new title. Much better.

My humble suggestion...

I really like the feel of your brand and when I looked at your logo the handwritten script gave it a hand-crafted, authentic feeling. That made me think of signatures and calligraphy.

So my suggested name is Copperplate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperplate_script)

You gotta know when to Folden

Hrom Folden

Change to "from the Heart", great post

Beholden

To Hold On

Mattercliff, Matterhorn ?

Name idea: Unbeholden

How about FromMaine? It looks like the .com is about to become available.

f8n or h4n - too geeky, I guess.

Frolden?

Nedloh?

James and I grew up in a town in Maine called Holden, so the name meant a lot to us. A couple months ago someone had mentioned the Holden snowboarding company. We did some research on trademark fair use, and ultimately agreed that because Holden was a geographic area, and because we weren’t doing outerwear or snowboard gear, and because our clothes won’t have any visible logos, there’d be no chance a consumer would confuse the brands. A handful of people on HackerNews pointed out that it might be more of a conflict than anticipated.*

Holden sells all sorts of clothes, including the type of shirts you would be selling. There is significant potential for consumer confusion.

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