I’ve very recently had some experience with the legal system, which I won’t go into here, so when I read about Mark’s C&D letter and his question about what he should do I quickly formed an opinion. Change the name, Mark. While I am not a lawyer, I don’t see how this could not be a case of trademark infringement on your part. The same fellow has a trademark on both Magnetic Poetry™ and Electro-Magnetic Poetry™ with the latter being a computer program somewhat similar to yours.
If nothing else, contact the fellow and tell him you are willing to change the name of the program to something else but you are leaving the file names on the website as they are and see if he’ll accept that. Depending on his demeanor from there out then decide if you want to get contrary with him. It’s much better to avoid legal wranglings of any kind if they aren’t necessary.
Oh, and one more thing, I don’t believe it matters whether or not the notice they sent you was a form letter.
About Larry D. Burton
I'm a 55 year old controls engineer who just likes tinkering with stuff.
Finished high school at a local institute of learning. Decided it wasn't a good time to be a healthy, physically fit 18 year old with no college experience. Entered college and started working toward a degree in animal husbandry.
1975-1976
Discoverd that I was not going to be a very good husband of animals so I left school to figure out what I might be good at. A local beverage company took pity on me and paid me to go from place to place making sure their on tap beverages were maintaining their high quality.
1976-1979
Got out of quality control and into vending. Learned about control systems and refrigeration also learned that vending machines are heavy and vending doesn't pay all that well.
In 1977 I found myself married
1979-1981
Dedicated myself to installing and maintaining commercial refrigeration equipment. Found myself on the roof of a local grocery store one night in the middle of an ice storm replacing a compressor and figured it was time to get back into school.
1981-1986
Got my but back into school at night and changed jobs to keep the mechanical and electrical systems of a local coporate hospital in working order. The job expanded to unstopping drains and burning lab samples and amputated body parts.
1986-now
Finished school and took on a job designing, installing and maintaining industrial control systems. Along the way I picked up a bunch of computer skills that became very useful connecting various industrial controllers to one another and moving the data into coporate databases. I now operate Dallas Bay Technologies, a one man shop specializing in technology solutions for industrial problems.
