This post is slightly off-topic; but considering that MobileRead runs a community forum, I thought it in our best interest to tell you of the following story that is currently happening in Germany.
Q: Can a private forum operator be sued if one of his members is offending existing laws by selecting a particular user name?
A: The private operator of a
German bodybuilding forum received a
cease-and-desist letter last Friday for one his forum members using a registered trademark as a user name. The trademark was registered in Germany in 1999 and apparently has never been in use nor is it related in any way to bodybuilding. Nevertheless, the lawyer specified the amount in dispute at 100,000 Euro (
~120,000 USD) based on the number of registered forum members (~30,000) and number of posts (~385,000). At no time did the operator commercially benefit from someone displaying the trademark on his forum; his site has been financed solely by Online ads and commissions from an Online store. He received three days (of which two are non-business) time to reconsider, to remove all traces of the trademark on his board, and to end the dispute by paying an agreement and consulting fee of 5,206.31 Euro. Otherwise he would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The operator is currently obtaining legal counsel and evaluating his options.
If the case goes to court and the trademark holder receives a favorable judgment, the consequences would be disastrous for all forum operators. While the MobileRead community is still relatively small with around 3,700 members, imagine a community such as
IGN Boards which has over 1,250,000 registered members! It would be virtually impossible for a forum operator to evaluate each user name and to guarantee that the name is not violating any trademarks or copyrights.
Another unfortunate example of the systematic misuse of a trademark ;(