

Haystack Is Now Sortfolio: A Trademark Issue - petercooper
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2080-haystack-is-now-sortfolio

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mixmax
_"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."_

Nice to see that disputes can actually be solved without laywers.

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lionhearted
> Nice to see that disputes can actually be solved without laywers.

Sort of - they solved the dispute without lawyers by capitulating. Usually you
can avoid a legal fight by backing down and doing what the other side wants.

That said, still probably the correct course of action. They didn't have any
real brand equity built up in Haystack, so moving on now means they don't run
any risk of getting shut down later. More importantly, they've got a small
team and no legal department, so making this not on the minds of their team is
very valuable.

That said, Haystack was a very catchy name, and I don't dig on Sortfolio as
much. Still a decent name and important to not run the risk and waste the
brainpower of their team though. I like to think I'd have made the same
decision, but I wonder if I'd have gone on an ego trip and gotten ready for
war. Something for me to consider and meditate on, and seems like a pretty
enlightened and safe call by the 37S team.

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mixmax
I don't think they capitulated as much as they just realised that prolonged
battles in court don't add any value to customers. As you say, they didn't
really have any brand equity in the name, and so didn't really lose that much.

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lionhearted
> I don't think they capitulated as much as they just realised that prolonged
> battles in court don't add any value to customers.

That's a very good point, you put it really well there. It's easy to get
caught up in "are we the good guys?", "can we win the fight?", harder to ask -
"What's best for our customers?" Insightful comment, I agree with you.

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taitems
Haystack.com over the years and its various owners:

\- 1996:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961105183402/http://www.haystac...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961105183402/http://www.haystack.com/)

\- 2002 (redirect): <http://web.archive.org/web/20020802105208/www.nai.com/>

\- 2006:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20060818061259/http://www.haystac...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060818061259/http://www.haystack.com/)

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snprbob86
I didn't realize 37signals had a service called Haystack. I assumed this post
was about Facebook's Haystack photo storage system.

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jmatt
Also modular search for django - <http://haystacksearch.org/>

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throw_away
also a storage engine used internally at cnet for something called webshots:
[http://martingreen.typepad.com/forward_looking_statement/200...](http://martingreen.typepad.com/forward_looking_statement/2006/06/more_on_haystac.html)

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cmelbye
Interesting. I think the new name is actually a bit better, as it better
represents the service's main feature which is sorting through thousands of
designers.

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bretpiatt
Agreed, haystack, from the "needle in a haystack" may work well for native
English speakers but expressions like that don't always translate well.
Sortfolio will be much more clear to a global audience needing design.

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icefox
Shouldn't a blog entry talking about how they have to do a bunch of promotion
include a sentence about what Sortfolio is?

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riffic
don't be lazy.

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pbhjpbhj
You could say the same to the article writer. Would it be that hard to write
"Sortfolio, our website design portfolio search site, ..." so one knows if
following the link is worthwhile?

