The first email:

To Whom it May Concern:

It has recently come to our attention that four of your products, dbPowerAMP Audio Player, dbPowerAMP Music Converter, dbPowerAMP CD Writer and dbPowerAMP Portable Audio are infringing on our AMP® trademark (see attached U.S. registration details).

"AMP", the AMP logo, and the "Advanced MultiMedia Products" brand name are trademarks of PlayMedia Systems, Inc. and/or its corporate affiliates (Advanced Multimedia Partners).

Only publishers of those products which contain our proprietary AMP® MP3 decoding engine OR who are properly licensed by us may use the trademark "AMP" as a component of their own product/service marks.

Therefore, I am hereby requesting (1) that you provide me with information regarding your business relationship with the website "Codec Central" or others who may be involved in the "Illustrate" enterprise, as it is presently unclear to me precisely WHO controls dbPowerAMP and whether Codec Central is, therefore, potentially infringing on our trademark as well, and (2) that you provide me with contact information regarding "Illustrate" personnel for contact purposes.

PlayMedia will be sending to all parties concerned a formal Cease and Desist letter explaining our position on this legal issue, and want to make sure that only the appropriate parties are brought into this matter.

More to follow. In the mean time, I may be reached any time by the following contact methods.

Thank you for your assistance with respect to this matter (which I hope can be resolved amicably).

Sincerely Yours,

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Brian D. Litman
CEO

PlayMedia Systems, Inc.
[personal details edited]
www.playmediasystems.com
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My reply:

Now obviously the whole reason for this debacle is your wish for us to License your mp3 decoder, PlayMedia would have to convince us that:

a) Your decoder has 'best-of-breed' decoding quality,
b) Your Licensing terms are favourable to us,

Our legal council suggests we have grounds for a VERY strong defence (emphasis on VERY was the legal councils not ours), one which we would be happy to mount in a court of your choosing in the US, should you decide. PlayMedia will not suceed in any 'Chilling Effects' with Illustrate.

We wish for PlayMedia to clarify these main points of contention:

Our usage of the word AMP comes from the application of audio amplification (commonly known as AMPing) further expanded by amplifier devices which form part of Hi-Fi units, these are commonly known also as AMPs. AMP is therefore a common generic term, as such our usage of the word AMP is (and always has been) a descriptive term of the process an audio signal is subject to, it is amplified. This is further elaborated by the other words in our name: dB is decibel, POWER describes the level of audio signal and AMP describes a process applied to the audio signal. The whole name is a conjoined descriptive sentence and therefore not infringing of your Trademark.

Also, how a person visiting dbpoweramp.com will be confused with Playmedia, especially as your 'AMP' product is an mp3 decoding SDK, our market is the home user, as such we do not offer an mp3 SDK?, just to clarify more...Playmedia are alleging a technical company (not a member of the public) who have a requirement for an mp3 decoding SDK will visit our site, confuse it with Playmedia and somehow purchase our non-existent mp3 SDK? This alleged Trademark infringement needs to be clarified.

_______________________
Mr Spoon www.dbpoweramp.com

This comes from a company that has a registered trademark MPFree, therefore setting themselves up to have the upper hand on anyone that has mp3 in their name.

Topic title is "another year, another lawsuit"...have you been harassed like this before?

oh well ... money makes people do stupid things ...

I don't think they'll be bothering you for long. Did they even say that it was dBPOWERAMP that was the c/r infringement?
edit : as in, dbpoweramp's name...

Last year it was mp3 patents.

I think worst case (I would have to check with legal advice) is dBpowerAMP becomes dBpoweRAMP (could be dB-pow-eRAMP), silly but there you go.

There is a defence against trademarks in that you cannot enforce a trademark of a descriptive item, for example if I was to sell eggs, I couldn't trademark 'Fresh' to stop anyone advertising Fresh Eggs. Those elements in dbpoweramps name are descriptive.

A sad fact, but there are always shady characters who search for products whose names are not yet registered, register the name for themselves and try to make money with this.

Some years ago the was a case in Germany, where a company (that went bust to everyones amusement) registered the name EXPLORA and Explorer.

Their lawyer and his syndikus (joke for insiders ) sent formal letters of caution to everyone who had the word "explorer" in his product or even a link to such a software on his homepage. All this BS went on for several years! One of the lawers went to prison for selling illegal dialers

I keep my fingers crossed that your case will have a good ending!

So if winamp was winAMP then they too would be infringing the AMP trademark? hmm good luck AMP...

I don't know either parties but does dbpoweramp have a graphic logo which resembles anything in playmediasystems? other than 3 capslocked AMP letters? as that would indeed be an iffy area for debate.

Do we need to know more? Way to go, spoon!

Do a google search for AMP : maybe they're filing a lawsuit against winamp, too

Nullsoft did license it, according to their site:





Bah, I hate marketing a-holes.

They filed a lawsuit against Winamp in 1998:
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/business/0...7,18475,00.html

So at least we know they've been around for awhile.

It's always fun to hear outright lies. After the 1998 lawsuit, Winamp eventually switched to using a Fgh decoder. Whatever "licensing" that took place was due to an out-of-court settlement, not "robust, uncompromising performance."

It's good to know that the public is so familiar with the power of Playmedia Systems' AMP trademark that it influences them to use WinAMP, just because it has AMP in the name!

I just sent the company an email, poking fun of their ridiculous sueing behavior, which I charitably assume to be an untrue rumor

Their history is:

Field suit against WinAmp for copyright infringement, aparently Nullsoft's Nitrane decoder contained part of their decoder, Nullsoft settled for $7,000,000 before a judgement.

This was the time that AOL bought Nullsoft, they included the Nullsoft mp3 decoder in their own Media player, which aparently broke the licensing terms with Winamp, a Judge agreed and stopped AOL 6 from shipping, AOL release AOL 7 straight away.

Freeamp also changed to Zinf, don't know if they had C & D. As far as I know AMP has never gone to court.

That can be read as within a period of time Nullsoft/AOL's Winamp had a license to use AMP® in no way implies that they are currently using it. However it is written to make you think so.



Unless of course I'm getting confused with the wording in english

They can't keep anyone from using the term "AMP". That's insane.

"Dear Microsoft,

I am informing you that your use of the word 'soft' in your company and product names is infringing on my company's trademark on the word 'soft', and negatively impacting sales of our product, 'SoftPillow MaxiPads'. Please cease and desist the use of your name immediately."



Such a letter would have just as much weight as PlayMedia Systems' claims on the term "AMP". The letter you received is not from a court of law, so it carries no legal weight, other than as evidence in a future trial, at which time your lawyers could take the letter apart in court and use it against the guy who wrote it. I've done this several times.

Also, an individual or company cannot issue a cease and desist letter, as it would hold no legal weight. Anyone can send such a letter to anyone. If any of them had legal authority, then a flurry of such letters could halt a capitalist economy. So his threat of such a letter is inane.

Throw it out, don't respond again (as your letter could then be used against you later in a court of law), and ignore all future contacts by the company, until you're contacted by a court. Until then, all he's doing is spamming you, and luring you to give him evidence to possibly use against you later. Over 50% of civil trials are won via self-incrimination...evidence naively given to the plaintiff by the defendant. Remember this. Give them nothing, and they'll have nothing.

Playmedia, old memories.
I am wondering 3 things:
*How did AMP became "Advanced MultiMedia Products", as in 1996 it was "Audio MPEG Player" ?
*How did Playmedia became owner of AMP, which was programmed by Tomislav Uzelac ?
*Do they really hope to succed in such scams?

Btw, "power amp" in google returns about 1 350 000 entries, mainly speaking of power amplifiers (of course), and even an Ebay ad (they probably bought the "power amp" adword)

This sounds like VERY good advise. I already found it strange paymedia wanted to "resolved it amicably" (most commercial companies dont get amical without a reason IMO), but i think this is just to lure you to respond. Is an email a legal alternative for normal letters anyway?

Yes, as it represents a written (well, printable) record which is normally tracable to an individual. But the substance of the letter in the original post was doo-doo. That company has no legal position to threaten Illustrate, or any of it's business units or activities. They could only do it through a court. Like you say, they're just trying to lure a response. Something they could use to their advantage later.

>Is an email a legal alternative for normal letters anyway?

Not sure, the US Patent office talks about having to give Oral notification to officers of a company, I wouldn't say that a letter is oral, but in this context it seems to suffice.

I am well aware this is all 'just talk' at this stage, until a court summons is issued.

I am careful with my replies, they have mentioned something about 'Codec Central' so want to know what their claims are with regards to that (looking for the word Amp this is not used with afore mentioned items give just Winamp Input adaptor).

>*How did AMP became "Advanced MultiMedia Products", as in 1996 it was "Audio MPEG Player" ?

I remember about somthing with Windows XP (or similar), Bill G once said it stood for _____ _____ and Microsofts legal department had to quickly retract his claims, otherwise it would have weakened their Trademark.

>*How did Playmedia became owner of AMP, which was programmed by Tomislav Uzelac ?

They still are, there is some company connection between the Croation department and the LA Office. I think what has happened is the real developers have become directors, whilst this Brian D. Litman runs the show, especially legal matters - he has even given speechs at Legal meetings (view their news section).

>*Do they really hope to succed in such scams?

Upto now they have been $7 Million sucessful with Nullsoft, there are no disclosed damages against AOL, it could be substantial.

It also brings to mind what are they trying to achieve? I think to get another mp3 decoder licensee company, with scare tactics. Their end goal cannot to own the dbpoweramp.com web site or dbpoweramp name as these are my trademarks and I would easily enforce them if used by Playmedia.

Bullsiht, just bullsiht.

Where, exactly, did you get this statistic?

I emailed them and got a reply directly (apparently) from Brian, within a couple of hours:

Networking, always networking.

At first glance, it really seemed like the Winamp case. Spoon has explained it well in post #15.

To complete it, Winamp was WinAMP, and Zinf being FreeAMP (note the capital letters) so at least they succeeded before in name changing.

And yes, the case with Winamp was also about the AMP decoder, which was used up until version 1.8 or around that time.

Finally, even if it seems unrelated, Linux is a trademark, and no distribution can use the name without paying fees on that regard. This has become news last month, but isn't at all new.

What i mean about this is that yes, there is a case (from my point of view), and could be easily fixable.

The thing is, FreeAMP should never have been theatened - a non commercial entity cannot infringe a Trademark, unless the Trademark is very well known (not in this case) and it constitutes dilution. I would like to see a law that makes firms accountable when making false accusations. I think 'Zinf' name has done freeamp no favors.

About Winamp, again there is more to that story, Justin Frankel was in the same university as the Croation guy who created the AMP mp3 decoder, the dates are very similar, but I think Winamp was named and appeared before the mp3 decoder, I have email Justin asking for clarification on this (50:50 if he replies, his motivation might be they took $7 million out of his pocket). If the AMP mp3 was named from Winamp, or Winamp came first there would be no need for Winamp to change anything.

I am hoping that it was named from Winamp which is a short form for Windows Amplifier, again a description of the program and not subject to Trademark rules.

Winamp was based on PlayMedia's engine, and for that reason, called Winamp (same applies to Dosamp). By the times of Winamp 2.5, Nullsoft was faced with a lawsuit from PlayMedia demanding that they start paying for the decoding engine. For that reason, from 2.666 onwards, they switched to FhG's, that as it seems, had better licensing terms.

More info from yours truly:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....indpost&p=36272

Yeah, that's my understanding also: the Winamp lawsuit was not based on the name, but rather on use of the decoder engine. So it's somewhat different than the dBpowerAMP case, which has to do only with the name.

Of course, it's quite possible that Justin was using a similar decoding engine becasue of contact with the Croatian guy, and the AMP decoder code was later bought by PlayMedia...

Hmmm... very interesting. if AMP=nitrane then AMP=nitrane=crap.
I don't remember the issue(s)... but I remember it being a quite bad decoder...

Right. Nitrane was Nullsoft's name for AMP. You can check its quality dropping by WinampHeaven or downloading DosAMP from ReallyRareWares.