Raf

If they wanted more than the domain name, then the case would still be going on. The idea that this is about something other than the domain name is fiction, as proven by the fact that once TWI GOT the domain name, the case was dropped. There was nothing else to argue over. I can't explain their choice of venue, but there's one inescapable fact: once TWI got the domain name, the case was dropped. It's all they were after, no matter how many times anyone screams otherwise.

I don't think TWI was being nice to Pat. I think they knew he couldn't afford to pay and, as such, they would be the ones stuck with the bill. And for what? To get the domain name that Pat already gave up? Once he gave up the domain name, paying TWI's lawyers was the only remaining issue. The longer TWI dragged it out, the more it would cost TWI. Nothing nice there at all. Just cold and practical, imo. We're talking about the settlement: they knew they'd get what they wanted because they asked for it (politely) and Pat (rightly) gave it to them. Had they not taken this to court, they would have had to buy the domain name from Pat, which (as Long Gone pointed out) would have legitimized Pat's claim to the domain name. TWI did exactly what a good lawyer would have told them to do: take this to court. I admit I'm stumped on their choice of venue (not being a lawyer, I can't answer why they went to Fed court instead of an arbitration board or whatever). But I don't think they're choice of venue invalidates their claim in the slightest.

TWI settled for two reasons: 1. Pat gave up the domain name, so they got what they wanted. 2. Pat wouldn't be able to pay the legal fees even if they prevailed on that matter, so it would be a total waste of their time to get a judgment against him. It would cost them more to get the judgment than to agree to pay their own fees. I'm guessing on both points, but it's the only reason that makes sense to me. (And lest it appear that I'm making an issue of Pat's finances, which I am not, let me add that I would not have been able to carry this as far, financially, as Pat did).

Actually, I had consulted with several trademark attorneys over the years who had the same opinion. Long Gone stole my thunder on both these points, but I'll reiterate. The fact that you consulted with attorneys does not ESTABLISH that the trademarks are too generic. It's their considered legal opinion, and it has not been tested. You said it has been established (I paraphrase), but nothing of the sort has been established. The only thing that has been established is that TWI will enforce its trademark. TWI can only enforce their trademarks by making it too costly to pursue justice. TWIM most likely saw the tremendous waste of their time and resources which TWI was more than happy to spend, and decided that the battle was not worth the cost. That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it, but as LG said, they can also prevail by being on the right side of the law and the facts. Nothing you have said or done has established that they were wrong on either front, no matter how often or how loudly you insist that it's so. Cool. Bring it on. Your refusal and/or failure to read our previous responses to this ridiculous point do not oblige me to repeat them. And for Pat's sake, the word is "defensible."

There's no question that the evidentiary hearing was not held. There's also no question that TWIM could have pursued their case but chose not to. One can easily speculate the reason they did so is they did not think they were going to be successful. This runs absolutely contrary to your repeated and incorrect insistence that "The Way" is too generic a trademark to enforce. You may be right; you may be wrong. But you are absolutely wrong to insist, as you have, that this has been established. It has not been established by anyone anywhere except you.

As you can probably tell from our photos, I won the hair pulling contest with Pat. ;)--> A high five coming from me would be disingenuous. It would not be sincere, and I don't want to insult Pat by offering one. I'll just reword what I've said before: Few people have done more damage to TWI in the field of exposing them than Pat. I applaud that, as loudly as I can. I contributed some small, tangential content to his site because I believe his site is an important resource for people who have left TWI. I have no problem with Pat's site and I hope he continues to give TWI hell in that arena. I have always felt this legal effort was a distraction from a greater mission, and I hope, now that it's over, Pat can devote his full energy to doing what he's done extremely well in the past: expose that petty little cult for what it is. (Yes, I know he's already responded to it, but it's worth repeating anyway).

I applaud the fact that Pat got as far as he did. I am pleased that he was not forced to pay TWI's legal fees (not that he could have anyway, but it's the principle of the thing). I wish he had gotten more: TWI should have paid him the cost of securing and maintaining the domain name for five years. Where I object is when people call this a "draw," when it was not; when Pat claims this was not about the domain name, when it was; when I'm accused of taking TWI's slant, when I did not. Warning a brother not to get too deep into a fight he can't win is NOT taking TWI's side. For all the criticism we "armchair lawyers" have gotten on this site, we called the outcome of this from the get-go, even with our limited understanding of the law (and I wasn't even basing my own thoughts on the law, but that's irrelevant). As for PA, he decided not to make his settlement the subject of discussion (I forget if there was a legal order forbidding discussion or not). Pat decided to make his case, his strategy, and his settlement the subject of discussion. What percentage of those cases are brought by the pro se litigant? This was not a case brought by a pro se litigant, it was defended by one. Of course it wasn't going to get thrown out: because TWI had a case against Pat. And I will restate my observation that none of the people on this site who have complained about "armchair lawyering" in this case raised ANY objections when the armchair lawyers said things that were supportive of Pat. Your opposition to armchair lawyering seemed awfully selective. Pat, I know we've butted heads hard on this, but I hope you take my criticisms as constructive. I desperately did not want to see you get hurt, although I predicted you would. On that, you exceeded my expectations, for which I am grateful. I know you didn't see it this way, but I don't think it would have been kind on my part to keep quiet about your course of action when I thought it was a major mistake on your part. I think your web sites do significant damage to TWI by telling the truth about their operations, and I thought this lawsuit and your position on it were diverting your attention away from a much more valuable endeavor. As stated earlier, I hope you return to that endeavor with full vigor. You lost a battle on their turf, but there's a greater battle, one in which TWI's secrets must be exposed to the light of truth. That's your turf. Go get 'em.

Well, we now know for certain: the central computer at Living Epistles Society was the ultimate Thread Killer.

I didn't know the rule on the A-Rod play, but once I knew it I agreed with the umps. Congrats, Sox. You've already made history. Good luck tonight. Not that I'm rooting for you, mind you, but dang, these have been some great games. You earned game 7.

Christian ministries with the words "The Way" in their names are relevant. Streisand and KC are not. That's what I was referring to. There are other ministries that use "The Way" in their names in manners that are not relevant because they do not seek to or actually cause confusion with TWI's trademark (which has NOT been refuted anywhere by anyone). If a church is called "The Way of Christ United Methodist Church," for example, TWI would probably lose that case because there is no confusion intended or caused. But if a church was called "The Way International Ministries," there is a likelihood that they would end up in court with TWI and that they would get spanked (the violation there is not intended, but it is caused). Oh, wait... You just answered your own question: they have a bunch of trademarks. They neglected an obvious one, and they corrected that. But the interesting thing about trademark law is that one does not have to register a trademark in order to enforce it. It just helps: it makes it a lot easier to enforce the trademark when it's registered. Your ENE pleadings are utterly irrelevant. No court has found in your favor, and the fact that you state the case does not make it defensible.

"Took TWI's slant"? If I were human, I believe my response would be, "Go to hell." If I were human. [The preceding was a Star Trek quote: not intended to be taken seriously.]I did not take TWI's slant on this, and I'm tired of your implication that anyone who tried to caution you against your course of action was taking TWI's side. I wanted to see you get through this with as little damage to you as possible. If you have a problem with that, it's your problem. You keep saying this was not about the web site, but the truth is, the moment you gave up the domain name, the case was dropped. They made no effort to shut down your other sites, and as soon as you gave up the web site, any attempt they would have made to shut down your sites was moot anyway. This was entirely about the domain name and the trademark infringements, your protestations notwithstanding.

LG, I believe you and I made the same suggestion. Pat, I'm glad this confrontation cost you no more than your legal fees. I wish it had not even cost you that. You and I had a strong disagreement over your course of action in this whole mess, and we seem to disagree even on the outcome. But let's look at the next step now: you have time, energy and resources that you can now place on getting the truth out, rather than on this quest. I hope you continue to use your web sites to expose TWI for the petty, vindictive, wannabe cult that it is.

Red Sox just won two in a row. They can win two in a row again. Not that I want to see it happen, mind you, but if any team can make it happen, it's this year's Red Sox. And how about them Astros?

I made a serious factual error in my previous post, but rather than go back and correct it, I want to note it here: You weren't "getting rid of it." You were trying to sell it, for a profit. $15,000. TWI would rather have paid its lawyers than pay you one dime. You did not get one dime. TWI still gets the domain name. Advantage, TWI (or, at best, a tie if you consider that they spent more to get the site than they would have if they just bought it from you.

Heh heh heh.

Let's go point for point on this: You were fighting for the right to use "The Way." Maybe you did abandon "The Way of Christ," but not in principle. You abandoned it to get rid of legal trouble. On the legal issue at stake, which includes whether using that name was a trademark violation, you caved. You can't pick up that fight again. It's over. Advantage: TWI You weren't "getting rid of it." You were trying to sell it, for a profit. $100,000. [Note: I was mistaken. See correction in my next post] TWI paid half that to their lawyers, and NONE of it to you. You get NOTHING for the site. TWI gets the domain name. Advantage, TWI. It has not been established that the trademark is unenforceable. In two lawsuits, if anything has been established, it's that TWI can and will enforce its trademark and it will win. It's true that you can print a Bible with the words "The Way" on it. TWI has never contested this. They don't consider it a trademark infringement, and rightly so. YOU keep bringing it up, which tells me that YOU see no difference there, but TWI does. You guys keep talking about the number of times "the way" shows up on Web sites, as if any use of the words themselves are a trademark violation. That's a total straw man argument. TWI has never made any such claim. When you offer this valuable information to any church that requests it, please include the valuable information that when TWIM's lawyers tried to challenge it, they got spanked, and so did you. Advantage: TWI. If I were right, which I was, TWI would have dropped the case as soon as you surrendered the domain name. You did, and they did. Advantage: TWI The sites that were infringing were thewayinternational.com, which infringed directly by using the successfully defended mark, and excultworld.com. which benefitted from your use of the successfully defended mark (pathofchrist or any other site you have would fall under the same description). Bottom line: your use of thewayinternational.com no longer being an issue, there is no infringement at any other one of your sites, so the issue is moot. Advantage: TWI The Score: Five to Nothing. Oh, you didn't have to pay TWI's legal fees. That's one for you. But if that counts, the fact that they didn't have to pay yours has to count for them. 6-1. Advantage: TWI.

Only the Forum is gone. The web site is fine. The forum is the only thing affected here.

You yourself said when you file these things, you put in more than you actually want. Do you really think they expected to shut down ex-cultworld? I don't. Otherwise they'd have gone after Paw and after me. They went after you because you used the name. You gave them the name back, and the legal problems went away... Hey wait a minute: Wasn't that what I advised you to do in the friggin first place? You got spanked.

Nothing to show for it... except for everything they wanted.

You got spanked. TWI knew your finances going into this, so going into this they had to want to pursue the course that cost them the least amount of money. TWI could afford $50,000. Could you afford what you spent? What percentage of TWI's income is $50,000? What percentage of your income did you spend? TWI chose the option that cost them the least amount of money, and got everything they wanted out of it, your protestations to the contrary. You got spanked, Pat. Hate to break it to you.

The Living Epistles Society Forum has crashed, and I'm afraid it's irreparable. All previous information is gone, kaput. All posts are gone. All e-mail addresses are gone. All registrations are gone. I want to express my gratitude to Bluzeman, who did absolutely everything he could to try to salvage it, but unfortunately, we're going to need to start the whole thing again from scratch. I'll try to post a notice here when a new forum is up. Thank you to everyone who registered and who carried on some interesting conversations. We had about 80 members at the end there, more than I could possibly have imagined when we got started. And thanks to Paw for his continued moral support of the site and its intentions. We'll be back.

Two terrific, terrific games. But alas... methinks it's time to put the Bosox out of their misery. You in OUR HOUSE tonight. :)-->

Sorry, I agree with Long Gone on this one. Pat got nothing out of this. So he doesn't have to pay TWI's costs. Big deal. He wouldn't have been able to pay them anyway, and TWI knew that. So TWI did the next best thing: they kept their costs to a minimum. A court trial would have cost them a lot more than a settlement, and they got everything they wanted in the settlement. Did they have to pay Pat's legal fees (ie, his court costs)? Nope. All they had to pay was their own. Big fat hairy deal. In settling this case, TWI paid LESS than they would have had the case gone to trial, and in return they got the exact same outcome, which, I should note, is precisely what I told Pat to do in the first place. Did Pat get spanked? On every principle he claimed to be fighting for: the domain name, the trademark infringement, the rights to the term "The Way," the ability to use "The Way of Christ" as a domain name and as a ministry name, Pat got spanked. On costs, he did not.

Last night's game was awesome. I could have done with a different outcome, but really, how can anyone complain?

Yes, but there is a big distinction here that, on previous threads (not this one) you are failing to grasp: Non-mention of a religion is not an endorsement of another religion. The fact that the Ten Commandments are removed from a courthouse should not be read as a victory for atheism. Erecting a monument that says "There is no God" would be a victory for atheism. And should such a monument be erected, I hope those on my side of this argument would have the intestinal fortitude and integrity to call it for what it is.