simon

i am not a lawyer but i have some experience in intellectual property.....this Raymond guy would probably have a stronger case if he protected his intellectual property properly at first (ie. register copyrights, trademarks). this case looks so much like a case of finding something to sue for in order to threaten the other party to compromise. i think he filed this sometime last year(it takes on average 24 months to get a court date for the federal courts).

i think it will be quite hard for him to claim that there was "passing off". it was quite clear to reasonable people that it was not the same night market(it was mentioned in numerous news articles and it was never represented to be the same event). Raymond's lawyer of course will say there is a case, otherwise he would have immediately asked the court for an "Interlocutory Injunction" (injunction before the trial) right away la. But of course, if he did ask for the Interlocutory Injunction and lost the case, he will have to pay the loss to the victim.
The fact of not asking for an injunction in the first place shows this is merely a threat, no basis at all.

simon

I think we should look at the case in a lawful way objective.

if A has a company doing a business, and the business is onhold but the company is not closed down.
Then B company kicks in do the same  ...
rainbow-davie 發表於 2009-4-29 13:29

same slogan or name then MAYBE there will be passing off or trademark infringement.

in general, it is not illegal to copy people's business model and compete with them directly. if i were the guys doing the new night market i would have called it "Night Market of Richmond" and designed completely new forms so both of Raymond's claims - trademark infringement and copyright infringement(of the sign up forms) will be totally invalid. the new hosts themselves were too lazy...its not that difficult to create new forms.

with that said, the claim that their forms were copied MIGHT be valid though, this is under copyright laws. i remember Raymond's forms had a bunch of grammar/spelling errors, so it might be easy to prove it was copied. But in any case, the form is nothing substantial and likely will give him very little compensation(probably not even enough to pay his legal fees).