Trademark - Happy Birthday

[Chad Heaton]

Hello All

This is sort of a Question and FYI...

We got a demand letter to stop using the following phrase on/in ANY content:
"we buy houses" (within quotes)
within the next 7 days or face legal action from the folks over at webuyhouses(dot)com

This seems to be a common everyday phrase for those of us that are in real estate investment... sort of like the old attempt at putting a trademark on requiring people to pay royalty/fees every time you told and/or sang happy birthday to someone.

If this is a valid claim... it will cause a LOT of rewrite and changes:
- Content
- Website Domain
- Website Directory Structure
- Business Cards/Documents/Flyers... etc.

We have a Real Estate Attorney that we are going to bounce this off of; however, I thought I'd put it out there in case anyone has any past experience and/or feedback/suggestions - or for those that are new, so they don't have to redesign stuff.

Just sort of thought it petty... maybe the folks that are buying the franchises, for leads, aren't getting any bites... complaining... and this is their way to try and corner something.
:: shrug ::

We are already working on alternate phrases, which may actually work out better...

Thoughts/Suggestions?
Chad

[Jeremy Dolan]

Agreed with @Michel Lee. This claim is preposterous and cannot possibly hold any solid ground. I have yet to hear of something like this being copyrighted. From my knowledge copyright belongs to the first person to publish those words in any way, shape, or form. There is no  way to confirm to this company had in any way invented the term "we buy houses" so therefore I think your in the clear on this one.