Link To Full Story: 37signals.com
Shared by JohnH
Ouch and Double Ouch! They already own Haystack.com. They have a large enough web presence already with 37signals, that they only needed to announce the new service... Dot com domain name, trademark, Twitter and Facebook handle. You really need them all before launch. Complicated!
Back in mid November we got an email from someone claiming that we were infringing on their “Haystack” trademark. To their credit, the email was kind and calm. No legalese, no pointed cease and desist, nothing harsh — just a “Hey guys, we’ve got a problem here…” email.
They felt our use of Haystack was infringing on their registered Haystack trademark in the “business information services” category.
Over the next few weeks we traded a few emails back and forth. We didn’t agree with their claim, but we didn’t want to get into a protracted legal battle either. Any time you can avoid lawyers is a good time. They agreed.
We discussed purchasing the trademark from them, but we couldn’t agree on a price. So in the end we decided we’d just rename our Haystack service. We were only a few months in, and we’re in this for the long term, so renaming early wouldn’t be a huge deal. We’d cut our losses and move on. The sooner the better.
Sortfolio
So today we announce that Haystack is now called Sortfolio. We kept the haystack.com domain name so the old haystack.com URLs redirect instantly to the new sortfolio.com URLs. No broken URLs, no interruption in service.
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