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Thursday, October 23, 2008

learned my lesson...


R.I.P. RUBY LANE DESIGNS...

so, i learned a valuable lesson today! not one i wanted to learn, but nonetheless i learned it...
i got up this morning and logged onto my etsy account this morning to see if i had any buys, and saw i had a new conversation. so, i checked it. it happened to be palmer marketing executive from www.rubylane.com. he was requesting information from me about my shop and wondered if i could send him my phone number. i thought this was awkward, so i googled his name and found a phone number, so i called him. and this is where the fun began....
he informed me that my shop was in violation of copyright infringement... and i had until the 31st of october to change everything and destroy anything that had ruby lane on it, unless i wanted to speak to his lawyer...
i just wanted to die...
so, now, to escape the clutches of a corporate lawsuit, i have a lot of work ahead of me in the next few weeks...
this means i need to design a new banner for my store, a new avatar for my chat and forum sites, business cards, retail tags, monogrammed tags for my purses, (which by the way i have to rip all of my bags apart to remove them)... so i feel buried... and on top of it all i have my first show on november first, and i am so behind! so, what a terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad day...
so what is this important lesson?
always search the US trademark database BEFORE you decide to start a business, even it it only based on your kitchen table...

3 comments:

Laura said...

I'm so sorry this happened Lissa!

Sweetest Petula said...

Ugh..the same thing happend to me, on my pet care line, except it was a PHRASE I was using, "every dog has it's day", and not even my name! Getting a fax from a copyright lawyer is not cool...I feel your pain!

I had to throw about about 2,000 full color catalogs. :(

Kelli said...

Oh wow... that is really unfortunate.

I saw you in the forum today and didn't even realize you were Ruby Lane!

Good luck getting everything ready for your show!