

Pair vs. Pair: Pair The App Is Being Sued By Pair Networks, The Hosting Company - dwynings
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/05/pair-vs-pair-pair-the-app-is-getting-sued-by-pair-networks-the-hosting-company/

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pg
This is a lame move by Pair Networks. It reminds me of the days when Sun went
around threatening random businesses that had "Java" in their name. I'm glad
someone is standing up to these thugs.

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shabble
One of the more ridiculous examples I'm aware of is Sparkfun:
<http://www.sparkfun.com/news/300>

In which, some lawyers hilariously try to argue that people might be confused
when trying to buy some SPARC hardware, and could end up with a crate full of
Arduinos, and the vague nagging feeling that it's going to take more than a
beowulf cluster to placate their C*O.

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staunch
I've known about Pair Networks for at least 10 years. I didn't for one second
think that a new social networking app named Pair had anything to do with
them.

I can't say I'm _totally_ unsympathetic towards Pair Networks though. If I was
Pair Networks I would probably be annoyed that a Pair social networking app
was getting popular. Then again I'd probably be hoping they became a billion
dollar company so it would make sense for them to trade me a $10M+ chunk of
equity for my domain.

I definitely wouldn't sue them though. Being annoyed doesn't justify being a
bully.

~~~
rdl
They must defend their trademark in order to maintain it. Maybe this is enough
of a grey area that they could have let it pass, but letting your trademark go
generic can be bad for some companies. I don't know if there's a way to do
this without suing, but maybe contacting trypair directly and getting
something in writing that trypair recognizes pair Networks priority in
(hosting, etc.) classes and will never enter those classes under the name
Pair, would be ok.

(in practice, I don't think pair needs rely that much on their trademark --
people don't really shop for hosting services casually, and the canonical
domain pair.com is an adequate identifier).

This seems like a reasonable civil disagreement where no one needs to actually
pitchfork either side.

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antidoh
When I first heard of Pair, I thought it was Pair. So I'm not surprised.

~~~
cperciva
Agreed. As soon as I got past the "why on earth is Pair joining YC?" and
realized that Pair wasn't Pair, my next thought was "doesn't anyone at YC have
enough sense to advise against using the name of a very large and well
established company?"

Starting a mobile software company called Pair and saying "but we're a mobile
software company, not a web hosting company" is like starting a motorized
bicycle company called General Motors and saying "but we're selling motorized
bicycles, not cars". I don't know or care what the lawyers are going to make
out of this; it stinks no matter who wins.

~~~
pg
It's more like starting an ice cream company and saying you're not making
cars. The two companies are in completely different businesses.

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cperciva
Your analogy is only valid in a world where an ice cream company could pivot
into making cars without anyone blinking (except for the occasional blog post
about how free ice cream is evil because the company behind it might decide to
start making cars instead).

~~~
pg
Are you claiming that Pair Networks could pivot into being a mobile app for
couples? Or that Pair could pivot into being an ISP? Because they both seem
equally unlikely.

~~~
cperciva
Yes, they both seem unlikely. But I never expected an MMORPG or a mash-up of
foursquare and mafia wars to turn into photo sharing websites... or for a
group of people who want to put art galleries onto the web to end up building
retail stores.

Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but at this point I'm not convinced that the
words "internet startup", "unlikely", and "pivot" belong in the same sentence.

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zdw
I'm a long term user of pair.com's service, and my feelings are mixed on this.

I tend to think that "Pair" is no more unique than the "Scrolls" term that
Mojang/Bethesda were arguing about in the games area recently.

In this case, the product types are even more different (dating vs web
hosting).

Personally I think that Pair (the dating app) was pretty dumb by picking that
name when they don't own it as a domain - historically I've disagreed with say
37signals and their arguments that owning the obvious domain names of their
products not mattering. It does matter, whether or not you buy into "everyone
uses search to find things", if only to reduce the likelyhood of phishing
attacks.

In short, don't confuse people. Don't launch a product with a name that is
someone else's domain (unless it's a scummy/obvious squatter). Do own the
domain that corresponds to your product. This make sense, other things
generally do not.

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chc
It sounds nice, but in practice, this advice is basically a more positive way
of saying "Choose a horrible name that's impossible to remember" — because
those are pretty much your only choices. All simple words are taken. A huge
amount of sensible phrases are taken. You can get creative and go the Dribbble
route, but now you get the downside of not owning the domain most people
expect _and_ the downside of having a horrible name.

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michaelpinto
I hate to say this but since I started using pair.com back in 2002 anytime I
hear the name "pair" they're the first company in the tech space that comes to
mind. But of course I'm an old timer around these parts...

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easp
I have mixed feelings about this. When I first heard about the Pair social
app, it was in the context of a discussion about social apps, and I never
thought about Pair.com.

Since then though, about half the time I've seen or heard me tionof the new
Pair app, I've had confusion about how Pair.com is suddenly a topic of
conversation again.

For what it is worth, I used to be a Pair customer, but ditched them for
Linode in search of better Wordpress price/performance.

