We've been hit with a cease-and-desist order! - 12/02/11 03:10 AM
I sat down this evening to go through my email inbox and was astonished to discover this gem in with all the usual assorted detrius that regularly lands there:
So I sat down and fired off this response, which I cc'd to Apple's legal email address. What do you think, was I too formal?
To whom it may concern:
Your IP department appears to have gone mad.
I can't tell if it's too much time spent listening to crappy language tutorials on CD or too much time spent shooting moodily lit photographs of said CDs to appear in Skymall magazine, but Fine Tuned Mac does not, and never has, used any Rosetta Stone image, product, brand name, trademark, or any other intellectual property for any reason.
In fact, I am quite baffled (German: verdutzt; French: déconcerté; Italian: sconcertato; Finnish: hämmentynyt) by your email. Try as I might, I can not make head nor tail of what you're talking about. Fine Tuned Mac is a free forum-based Macintosh technical troubleshooting site. We have no marketing campaigns, and the only Google ads we've ever run have focused solely on Macintosh troubleshooting terms.
Now, I can perhaps, if I squint REALLY hard, perhaps see where you might have run off the rails, insofar as there are troubleshooting threads on the Fine Tuned Mac Web site that talk about Rosetta. However, what you may not know is that Rosetta is Apple's trade name for their proprietary real-time interpreter that permits machine code written for PowerPC processors to run on Intel-based computers. If you're unfamiliar with any of those terms, you might find a Google search enlightening.
Should you have a problem with Apple's use of the word "Rosetta," I respectfully (well, as respectfully as I can manage, anyway) suggest you take this up with Apple's intellectual property lawyers.
I trust this concludes your interest in Fine Tuned Mac.
Regards,
Franklin Veaux
Quote:
To whom it may concern:
This is to inform you that a website you manage, finetunedmac.com, has come to the attention of Rosetta Stone Ltd. ("Rosetta Stone").
Rosetta Stone's automated monitoring software continually monitors, collects and stores instances of unauthorized use, sales or other violations of Rosetta Stone's intellectual property rights on the Internet. Our records indicate that your site, finetunedmac.com, has employed an advertising or sales campaign that may have incorporated Rosetta Stone products and/or trademarks or terms confusingly similar thereto.
In order to ensure your compliance with our request, you should (i) delete “Rosettaâ€, "Rosetta Stone" and any variations thereof, from your search engine keyword list, and (ii) add "-Rosetta" and "-Rosetta Stone" as negative keywords (negative matching) to your search engine keyword list. If you have questions, the search engine websites explain how this is done.
We believe that there is no legitimate reason or basis for you to rely on any Rosetta Stone trademark, image or product in your marketing or sales campaigns, and encourage you to review all of your advertising campaigns and sites to avoid such practices in the future.
Sincerely,
BrandEnforcement@rosettastone.com
Rosetta Stone Ltd.
This is to inform you that a website you manage, finetunedmac.com, has come to the attention of Rosetta Stone Ltd. ("Rosetta Stone").
Rosetta Stone's automated monitoring software continually monitors, collects and stores instances of unauthorized use, sales or other violations of Rosetta Stone's intellectual property rights on the Internet. Our records indicate that your site, finetunedmac.com, has employed an advertising or sales campaign that may have incorporated Rosetta Stone products and/or trademarks or terms confusingly similar thereto.
In order to ensure your compliance with our request, you should (i) delete “Rosettaâ€, "Rosetta Stone" and any variations thereof, from your search engine keyword list, and (ii) add "-Rosetta" and "-Rosetta Stone" as negative keywords (negative matching) to your search engine keyword list. If you have questions, the search engine websites explain how this is done.
We believe that there is no legitimate reason or basis for you to rely on any Rosetta Stone trademark, image or product in your marketing or sales campaigns, and encourage you to review all of your advertising campaigns and sites to avoid such practices in the future.
Sincerely,
BrandEnforcement@rosettastone.com
Rosetta Stone Ltd.
So I sat down and fired off this response, which I cc'd to Apple's legal email address. What do you think, was I too formal?
To whom it may concern:
Your IP department appears to have gone mad.
I can't tell if it's too much time spent listening to crappy language tutorials on CD or too much time spent shooting moodily lit photographs of said CDs to appear in Skymall magazine, but Fine Tuned Mac does not, and never has, used any Rosetta Stone image, product, brand name, trademark, or any other intellectual property for any reason.
In fact, I am quite baffled (German: verdutzt; French: déconcerté; Italian: sconcertato; Finnish: hämmentynyt) by your email. Try as I might, I can not make head nor tail of what you're talking about. Fine Tuned Mac is a free forum-based Macintosh technical troubleshooting site. We have no marketing campaigns, and the only Google ads we've ever run have focused solely on Macintosh troubleshooting terms.
Now, I can perhaps, if I squint REALLY hard, perhaps see where you might have run off the rails, insofar as there are troubleshooting threads on the Fine Tuned Mac Web site that talk about Rosetta. However, what you may not know is that Rosetta is Apple's trade name for their proprietary real-time interpreter that permits machine code written for PowerPC processors to run on Intel-based computers. If you're unfamiliar with any of those terms, you might find a Google search enlightening.
Should you have a problem with Apple's use of the word "Rosetta," I respectfully (well, as respectfully as I can manage, anyway) suggest you take this up with Apple's intellectual property lawyers.
I trust this concludes your interest in Fine Tuned Mac.
Regards,
Franklin Veaux
...and good luck, let us know how that works out.