An interesting phone conversation

May 24 02:16 UTC 1995

Grex's former landlord, Ken Ascher, called me this evening.  Evidently a
person showed up at the warehouse and wanted to see Grex, or its offices, or
talk to a Grex person, or *something*.  It turns out that the Ann Arbor News
did a story about her business this weekend, and now people are trying to
telephone her.  Her business is called "Cyberspace, Inc.".  People look it
up in the phone book.  It's not listed, but "Cyberspace Communications"
(that's Grex) *is* listed.  So people call Grex's number, and all they get
is modem noises.  Ken had the impression that this person thought that by
incorporating as "Cyberspace, Inc." she owned the name "Cyberspace" and was
annoyed with us for trying to take the name from her.  Ken, always an
interesting character, says he explained to her how he is incorporated as
"Weather Bureau", complete with a listing in the telephone book, which some
people find objectionable, but which is perfectly legal.

She left Ken her name and phone number, so I'll call her tomorrow.

response 2 of 93:

May 24 03:11 UTC 1995

        I can find Weather Bur listed in the phone book, with Ken's
address, but no Weather Bureau.  Ken is also listed as Consolodated Lint,
and A, among other things.  A is his Candian Export Division, where they
answer the phone and say, "A."  A is also the first listing in this year's
Ann Arbor phone book.  But enough about Ken and his crazy phone book listings.
        I don't know anything about this person who stopped by the
warehouse, or what her business is.  The only thing I've seen in the Ann
Arbor News recently about "Cyberspace, Inc." was about us, unless this
person also operates a system called Grex, and is a member of WIN.
        That said, I can't help assuming that she must be a relatively new
business, considering that if she's upset about missing phone calls it
doesn't seem likely that she would get an unllisted number for her
business.  It sounds like she probably incorporated after the current
phone book came out, meaning that we have been around significantly longer
than she has.
        I'm not a lawyer, so I may not know what I'm talking about here,
but I've heard that for a business to be able to keep another business
from taking the same name, they have to be going after the same market. 
With a name like Cyberspace, Inc., it sounds like she might be going after
some sort of computer market, but for her to have any sort of claim
against us she would have to show that she had the name first.  Assuming
we had the name first, there's not much she can do about us.

response 4 of 93:

May 24 05:27 UTC 1995

I agree with Greg. A search is done when you incorporate to be sure that
you have chosen a unique name. Thereafter, no one else can incorporate
with that name - in the same state. Someone could incorporate a
Cyberspace Communications Inc in another state, however, unless we
registered to do business in that (or every) state. I suggest just
being polite to this person and not argue with her (even if she wants
to argue), and leave it that our corporate name is Cyberspace
Communications, thank you. However, please do tell us what develops,
as it is a curious matter.

response 6 of 93:

May 24 12:44 UTC 1995

also might want to remind someone that   inc   com  (and)   org   are
rather different ........

response 8 of 93:

May 24 19:14 UTC 1995

I raised this point in item 32, about "buying all the grex votes", as a
reason someone might want to I wrote:: 

"This is a potential problem if Grex had sufficient assets to make a group
 want to obtain them. The two assets it has that could be tempting are the
 name Grex, and the domain name cyberspace.org."

We must distinguish between our corporate name, Cyberspace Communications,
which is registered with the state, our "trademark" Grex, which is not
registered anywhere, and our domain name cyberspace.org, which I guess we
"own" in some sense (though I do not know if or how it can be sold). 

response 10 of 93:

May 24 20:57 UTC 1995

I called her today.  She didn't at all seem upset about Grex's choice
of name.  Rather, she wanted us to know that her company existed, so
that if someone got confused about which was which, we would understand
why they were confused.  This is the same as when I contacted the
people with the "cyberspace.com" domain name to be sure that they knew
that someone was using the "cyberspace.org" domain name, just so that
when people got confused we would understand the source of the confusion.

By the way, she heard about Grex in the recent Ann Arbor News article;
it's not that the News did an article about her company.

She says she's tried connecting to Grex [I think to our web pages] and
looking around.  The all-text interface isn't as flashy as the interfaces
she's used to, but still she is curious to learn more about us.  She has
some background in community services, so she thinks Grex is a neat idea.

I invited her to this evening's board meeting, and I think she'll be
there.

response 12 of 93:

May 25 01:39 UTC 1995

I knew, when I saw that, that something bad was going to happen
because of it.  I kept trying to tell myself, "Come on Rob, nobody's
going to notice that, at least they spelled Grex correctly and
didn't accuse of of being a sex-crazy BBS," but I knew from the
depths of my soul that something would result...

response 14 of 93:

May 25 06:02 UTC 1995

The INTERNIC (the internet database people) do not really base there
decisions on names on any lawfully binding way.  Rather, they do it on
a first come, first serve basis.  

But even though that is so, a name like cyberspace.org could very
easily be considered a commodity out there in the newly comercialized
Internet.  

response 16 of 93:

May 25 12:19 UTC 1995

Re 14: Of course, there was the lawsuit between the various test 
preparation agencies, where (I think it was) The Princeton Review
registered the domain kaplan.com as an address for people to e-mail
their Stanley H. Kaplan complaints to.  The judge ruled that the
Stanley H. Kaplan people had the right to the kaplan.com name.

Still, I agree that it would be a good idea to register the name Grex.
If we register an assumed name, that only covers one county.  Would
it make sense to do something statewide to reserve the name Grex?
It's too expensive to register the name in *every* county; is there
some other statewide alternative, other than incorporating as
"Grex, Inc."?

response 18 of 93:

May 25 15:41 UTC 1995

I don't know how one registers just a name in Michigan, but it must be
simple, since it only costs $10 to incorporate. It would not be 
a dba ("doing business as") exactly, as we *use* "Grex" but don't
do *business* as "Grex". Any experts reading this? Maybe, ask the
library reference desk?

response 20 of 93:

May 25 19:32 UTC 1995

We aren't doing business, but we are a business.  A non-profit one.
Couldn't we consider Grex our "product"?  It is the creation of the
imagination and intellectual work of founding members, who are (were?)
part of Cyberspace Communications, Inc.  (Are there any lawyers among us?)

response 22 of 93:

May 25 21:40 UTC 1995

Grex is the *computer system* used by CC Inc. But we use it in other
ways. It probably falls into a category of copyright law. It is an
invented name for our conferencing system (and for its mode of use). 
There was a copyright FAQ around somewhere....anyone know the URL?

response 24 of 93:

May 25 22:58 UTC 1995

I'd say it's an assumed name, and a dba is perfectly applicable.
(I've been doing a lot of introductory reading about these things
lately, but I'm no expert.)