One of the less well reviewed products on this site is GoECart. I often chat with owners of shopping carts and they are quite happy to have legitimate criticism about them.

Manish Chowdhary, the CEO of GoECart, is an exception. The numerous bad reviews about his product have been handled by him in an interesting way. Improving his product and resolving customer issues? Nope. He’s chosen to take legal action against me.

I first heard from Manish in 2007 where he demanded I provide him with the IP addresses of reviews he didn’t like. Of course I didn’t comply. I have a whole series of fraud checks which, while they can never be 100% accurate, are pretty good. Let’s just say after running this site for about 10 years, I’ve learnt a few things and upgraded the review approval process a number of times to become increasingly sophisticated in detecting astroturfing activities.

Manish then contacted me in February 2011 asking to be left out of my site. When I say “ask” that would suggest a polite request. He demanded.

His email:

Subject: GoECart Trademark Infringement on Shopping-cart-reviews.com

Mark,

We do not wish to participate in your online reviews program and request that you remove all GoECart review pages (http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx etc.) and all other mentions of GoECart from your site immediately. We are also troubled by the fact that you are exploiting our registered trademark (Trademark numbers: 3376888, 3371337, 77572916 and 77572899) to generate revenue for your site by selling paid sponsorships and promoting our competitors’ products. This is obviously intended to take a free ride on GoECart’s hard earned branding. We view such actions as intentional infringement of GoECart’s intellectual property for commercial gain in violation of Federal and state trademark and unfair competition laws. This practice, which is clearly intended to lure away prospective customers of GoECart’s products and services to competing businesses, inappropriately trades on the intellectual property rights of GoECart.

We kindly request that you immediately remove GoECart from all your review pages such as http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx and remove all mentions of GoECart, from your site within five (5) business days following which we would have no option but to take strict legal action against you and your website hosting provider.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email.

Sincerely,
Manish Chowdhary

CEO, GoECart

203-336-2284 ext. 202

My response:

Hi Manish

Thank you for your email. I acknowledge that you own the trademarks as listed (2 current, 2 abandoned).

I deny that I am “intend(ing) to lure away prospective customers of GoECart’s products and services to competing businesses”. You have the same chance as any other product on my site. I send free traffic. You have received free traffic from me (I record all clicks). Others with more satisfied customers have received much much more.

Trademarks are designed to prevent “likelihood of confusion”: the standard legal term. There is no likelihood of confusion, the intent of my site is very clear – the word “reviews” in the domain and header supports that.

Any further attempts whatsoever you make at trying to bully your poor reviews off the internet (I suggest you redirect your legal fees to invest in improving your product) will result in me blogging this incident, and investing SEO effort into ensuring that the information appears prominently in Google for searches related to GoECart.

I received no response to that email, and assumed that he had backed off. Not so it seems.

This week, my webhosting company received a DCMA takedown request.

To whom it may concern,
This is a notice of request to takedown the following website. We consider this notice a formal “Cease and Desist”:

http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx

GoECart has many federally registered trademarks which provide prima facie evidence of its trademark rights (and for those marks that have obtained incontestability, the registrations are conclusive evidence of GoECart’s rights. The above listed URL is currently infringing on our registered Copyright and Trademarks (Trademark numbers: 3376888, 3371337, 77572916 and 77572899). We ask that any and all references to GoECart and MachroTech LLC including all logos are removed immediately.

If we have not received written confirmation of your agreement to these terms by January 30, 2012, GoECart will not hesitate to take appropriate action to enforce its legal rights in its valuable intellectual property. GoECart is prepared to recover any damage that is fallen on our clients or liable damage of name that might result from exposure to unmitigated risk arising from the above domain name. Please note that this letter is not meant to be a complete statement of facts, and nothing contained herein should be deemed a waiver of our rights or defenses.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter and do not hesitate to contact us for information.
Sincerely,

Manish Chowdhary
CEO

I’m very appreciative to my webhost, www.arvixe.com, for recognising Manish as the troll he is and not responding to his DCMA claim. I also think it’s funny that Manish continues to mention abandoned trademarks.

Manish seems to be thinking that either:

1. A trademark gives him complete 100% control over everytime someone ever utters his name, or;

2. He thinks I am stupid enough to be scared by believing that.

Manish, that’s not how a trademark works. A trademark protects you from people trying to pass themselves off as you. Ask a first year law student if you need help. If my page was somehow pretending to be a GoECart page, then it would be a legitimate claim. It’s very obviously not a GoECart page.

As I’ve said to you numerous times Manish, spend less time on legal action, more time on improving your product. I wish you and your business well, and genuinely hope you improve your product and increase your customer satisfaction. I look forward to seeing genuine positive reviews from your customers in the future.

To whom it may concern,
This is a notice of request to takedown the following website. We consider this notice a formal “Cease and Desist”:
http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx

GoECart has many federally registered trademarks which provide prima facie evidence of its trademark rights (and for those marks that have obtained incontestability, the registrations are conclusive evidence of GoECart’s rights. The above listed URL is currently infringing on our registered Copyright and Trademarks (Trademark numbers: 3376888, 3371337, 77572916 and 77572899). We ask that any and all references to GoECart and MachroTech LLC including all logos are removed immediately.

If we have not received written confirmation of your agreement to these terms by January 30, 2012, GoECart will not hesitate to take appropriate action to enforce its legal rights in its valuable intellectual property. GoECart is prepared to recover any damage that is fallen on our clients or liable damage of name that might result from exposure to unmitigated risk arising from the above domain name. Please note that this letter is not meant to be a complete statement of facts, and nothing contained herein should be deemed a waiver of our rights or defenses.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter and do not hesitate to contact us for information.
Sincerely,

Manish Chowdhary
CEO

Categories: Shopping Carts | Date: Jan 28th, 2012 | Author: Mark | 2 Comments

I’m still working hard (very hard – sleep? What’s that?) on my new Magento site. The new programmer is all I hoped and more. It makes a WORLD of difference having a great programmer. Just yesterday I found a significant requirement which I’d missed in my specs. I was kicking myself. Most of my products are very simple, but my content manager just spotted a few products where there are variations – choose a color. Fortunately, my programmer didn’t blink, and is sorting it out as I type. Shouldn’t be more than 1 day lost, probably less. Also, a key supplier had some major problems in their data feed. I’d asked them to look at changing their API but that stuff normally takes weeks/months at most companies. After spending hours with the programmer trying to find a way around it, I got an email a day later from the supplier saying “oh yeah, that is a bit silly, it’s fixed and live!”. Major relief. Makes it way easier to handle stock management on the backend.

Overall I’m on track to go live in a few weeks. The biggest hold up at this point might be some issues related to business/financial structure (beyond the scope of this blog). Overall the site is looking great and I’m really pleased.

Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 10th, 2012 | Author: Mark | 1 Comment

Successful ecommerce site owners know that happy online shoppers are shoppers who are confident that the information that they transmit is secure, and that the sites they purchase from have developed clear and easy-to-understand terms and conditions; designed to safeguard the safety and interests of both storeowners and consumers.

If you’re an ecommerce store owner, you owe it to yourself and your customers to take the time to spell out your TOS (terms of service) clearly and in writing on your site. If you’re not sure how to get started, here are some important things to include and keep in mind:

Liabilities And Warranties

Take a look at some of the TOS of other ecommerce sites. They likely include a statement to the affect that the owners of the site make no express or implied warranties, guaranties, statements or representations about the site.

If you scroll down a little further, you’ll also likely see what is known as a liability disclaimer, which basically says that the site owner can’t be held responsible for any type of liability or personal injury that occurs as a result of consumers accessing the site, or because of any information contained within the site itself.

Site Information And General Use

Your terms of service need to be easy to understand, and should inform your customers about what to expect (and what not to expect) from your site. This includes the most up-to-date information possible about your services, products, and your business as a whole.

It is also important to include a statement to the affect that you, either as an individual or acting as a representative of a company, legally own the website and the domain associated with it, and have the legal authority to use the site for the purposes outlined in your TOS.

Need more tips and information? Visit the official FTC (Federal Trade Commission) website for information on their policies and guidelines. http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus28-advertising-and-marketing-internet-rules-road

Aura Talbott is the SEO Writer and Lead Blogger at Miva Merchant, an ecommerce software and hosting company. You can read more of her blog posts and learn more about Miva Merchant at http://www.mivamerchant.com/blog.

Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 10th, 2012 | Author: Mark | No Comments