Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won
not tay ber own
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Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won |
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| This rebuttal was submitted to us on July 17, 2007. We have not altered the contents. However, we have reformatted it in an attempt to make it more readable. Some people do not understand that paragraphs can be their friends and are considered good grammar. This is the annotated "rebuttal" and contains our comments and direct quotes challenging any allegations made by the party. All of our "annotations" are in BLUE. |
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We believe that this article was posted and commented on without the full and completed story behind the vero (sic) closure that occurred
on April 18, 2006. This article was written as if this act just occurred (We admit we did not include the dates but
this was written a year earlier and overlooked for posting until 2007) and is still pending, preventing Nancy Lam, aka Raincloud,
ebay (sic) seller chiihideki (Nancy's ebay (sic) name at the time of the vero (sic) closure) as of May 21, 2007 ebay (sic) seller akinotsuyu, from listing
her cat and bunny hats.
We, AnimeHot, are a small, home based business (The person you tried to harm is a small, home-based business) run by a married couple who hand make all the items that you see for sale on our website and ebay (sic) (And this means you can do whatever you want?) . We are not a big business (And neither was the person whose auctions you unlawfully terminated) , nor are we lawyers or attorneys and we do not claim to know now or have known on April 18, 2006 all the ins and outs of copyright law (Ignorance of the law is not an excuse). We do not deny that we used the vero (sic) program to shut down 6 of Nancy's auctions where she posted her website in the item location section (an ebay violation) (Perhaps an eBay violation but not a legal excuse for terminating the auctions. All this does is make you a snitch.) and claimed the following statement "See my other auctions for more hats and other colors! Why pay upwards of $25-40 when you can get the exact same hat and quality for half the price? Get yours today!". This wording made it sound like Nancy was purchasing these hats from us, AnimeHot (According to whom? You? No one else reads that into their wording that you just quoted. We certainly do not.), and that chiihideki would be offering an AnimeHot hat (Again, according to you), “the same exact hat and quality”, to the buyer “for half the price”, as if we were deliberately increasing the price to gouge the buyer (It is called competitive advertising. People do it all the time. For this you attacker her?). Back in April of 2006 we were awaiting a patent and we had filed the paperwork with the copyright office, but we had not received a reply as to our copyright or patent status. We thought that we were within our rights (Rights are based upon those granted by a lawfully acquired copyright and a lawfully acquired patent.You acknowledge that you filed; did you use a lawyer? On an important matter?) to use the vero (sic) program and that Nancy was deliberately (Again, your wording and your assertion) misleading buyers to think that she was selling an AnimeHot hat. (You are repeating the same lame arguments.) At the time we were the only other ebay (sic) seller who offered a 4 panel, flip brim, fold over ear cat and bunny style hat. (So what?) Nancy replicated our design (And what was illegal about that?) and went so far as to duplicate our photo style(And what was illegal about that?), 3 individual photos showing the front of the hat, the right side of the hat and the back of the hat, with a hat she constructed. It was based on the misleading wording (According to you it was misleading)in Nancy's auction, the hat's identical appearance and our limited understanding of the vero (sic) system that we reported her auctions. (Oh! You were stupid and that somehow is an excuse? Did you ever apologize to her? Why not?) It was not until after chiihideki's auctions were closed, after Nancy filed a counter vero (sic) suit (She filed a "counter notice" as allowed by the DMCA, not a "counter suit" as you mistakenly allege) against us and after the quoted emails that we learned that vero did not verify the legitimacy of a vero closure request. (you idiots. Had you even bothered to read the fine print, you would have known up front eBay doesn't "verify" the "rights" of people like yourselves. Nor does eBay ever claim to "verify" what your rights are.) Again, we are not lawyers or attorneys (the only positive statement so far), all we knew about the vero (sic) program is what ebay (sic) had posted on their site (Which you did not read closely enough) which reads “eBay is committed to protecting the intellectual property rights of third parties and to providing its users with a safe place to trade. eBay created the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program so that intellectual property owners could easily report listings that infringe their rights (But you were not a legitimate rights holder, were you?) . It is in eBay's interest to ensure that infringing items are removed from the site, as they erode buyer and good seller trust…eBay cannot be an expert in your intellectual property rights in over 25,000 categories, and cannot verify that sellers have the right to sell the millions of items they post on eBay each day, we need your help in identifying listings which do not appear on their face to infringe your rights.” When we filled out the paperwork for the vero (sic) program it states: “I, the undersigned, state under penalty of perjury that
We are being called nitwits, morons, jerks and idiots (Applause here, please) for actions that took place over a year ago with the information that we had at the time. We had a “good faith belief” that we had the right to use vero and close auctions that we thought were infringing upon our rights. (You took potentially harmful actions against a person, an eBay seller, without fully knowing, or attempting to know, lawfully, if you had the legal to take this action.) While you may look at our animal hats and see only a utilitarian hat, we see an art form with our signature design and brand that we established in the anime and cosplay community. (What you "see" does not give you the legal right to terminate eBay auctions or to harm the "legitimate" sellers of similar or identical merchandise.) We did not harm Nancy in any way. (By ordering the termination of her auctions, you placed her eBay selling account in possible suspension. Had another eBay "rights holder" done something similar, eBay would have suspended her selling privileges, possibly indefinitely. The fact you did not hurt her, according to you was accidental; you intended to hurt her. And let us not ignore the emotional toll something like this takes on a seller. But you do not care about that, do you?). We have not prevented Nancy from selling her own design of cat and bunny hats in any way (according to you). We did not take Nancy to court, receive a court order or vero (sic) Nancy for any other items (Why? Because you could not win!) . After Nancy's counter vero (sic) suit we had until May 10, 2006 to submit paperwork to ebay (sic) showing that we had filed an action in federal court, which we did not obtain nor did we have the money to obtain. Nancy was informed by ebay (sic) that she could re-list her auctions as of May 10, 2006.
Well, May 10, 2006 has long since passed and Nancy voluntarily changed her hat pattern (Again, according to you)
to something very similar to ours and no longer claims that she is selling “the exact same hat and quality”
(And what does this have to do with anything? It is just a pity party.) In fact, as of April 20, 2007 she stopped offering cat and bunny hats
for sale on her website, www.raincloudworkshop.com
We have not used the vero (sic) program since this incident (We only have your word for this.)
and we are not preventing anyone from selling their items on ebay (sic) or anywhere
else on the internet. So here we are, labeled in the hall of shame, as idiot #1 and idiot #2 under our wedding photo, for something
that happened over a year ago that has long since been resolved. We were trying to protect our design, our brand and our livelihood
as artists. (But did you do it lawfully? No, you didn't. And, you show no remorse. That is why you are in the
Tabberone Trademark & Copyright Abusers' Hall Of Shame.)
At the time we wanted Nancy to create her own design and make her own artistic rendition of a cat and bunny hat, not mislead buyers
into thinking they were buying an AnimeHot hat for half the price (Again, your assertion. She was not breaking any law.)
. Knowing what we know now in regards to copyright and vero (sic) we could
have delt (sic) with the situation differently, but we do not believe that we did anything wrong on April 18, 2006.
(And that is exactly why you are in, and will remain in, the Tabberone Trademark & Copyright Abusers' Hall Of Shame.)
Nancy does not have any strike against her ebay (sic) account from us (If the black mark was not rescinded it is still potentially
there and still potentially harmful) and she has not been loosing (sic) money over the past year and three
months due to this vero (sic) filing. The vero (sic) filing only prevented her from re-listing the 6 original auctions where she claimed "See
my other auctions for more hats and other colors! Why pay upwards of $25-40 when you can get the exact same hat and quality for half
the price? Get yours today!" (Again, you re-hash your hateful attacks on someone who had the legal right to sell and
describe what she was selling.)
We are a bit confused as to why we are being chastised like we are perpetual vero (sic) abusers. (Because, to quote
Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate". If you have to ask why, after all of this,
you are too stupid to comprehend.)
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