Lik

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 發表於 2009-4-28 21:20

Thank you for the insight, esp about the point on interlocutory injunction.

It really makes me wonder though -- what was Raymond thinking when he filed for the lawsuit? I quite agree with Simon's opinion that he probably wanted to use the lawsuit as something to "threaten" the other party or possibly using it as his bargaining chip to negotiate for something. However, given that his case was weak to begin with, why proceed with a lawsuit like that? It's almost like he bluffed at the poker table, but the other party called and raised him back. And now he is stuck with what he got himself into...

-Lik

rainbow-davie

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 business model, using the same application, same idea, same slogan, do you think it is legal?

I dunno about how you guys feel or know.  But even in Computer industry, if someone create a software (even very simple one), someone else bases on the functionalities of that & re-engineering another close to identical software will be illegal.

I think if the new event is located in antoher site, with another name & with another administration process, then it will be okay.. But what the new event company doing now can really fall into illegal action.

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).