Darth RadaR's Journal: Lawyers- Do some of them feed off of fear and ignorance?

Disclaimer: IANAL, but there's a few I'd like to run over with my Jeep in the carpark.

A company I work for is one of the thousands of companies that use the 3 letter acronym, PSI. Let's also consider that it is a measurement (pounds per sq. inch), as well as the name of a letter in the Greek alphabet. If that's not enough, US and state laws restrict the copyrighting of 3 letter acronyms (according to a piece of leagal paperwork that pertains to a copyright the company I work for has).

With all of that to consider, would you believe that some jerk has the nerve to send this company a letter to "cease and desist from any and all use of the mark 'PSI'". The company has successfully fought another person doing the same thing 5 years ago.

I suppose it's some sort of "in thing" or maybe it's just something that lawyers do to make themselves look busy to their clients. Of course, the clients might be clueless in knowing that this little chase will not get anywhere. The Lawyers should know that there is not a court around that will let them win this case. So why do they do it? To get money off of some clueless client is my guess. OTOH, the client might have been the one to order the Lawyer to go after the company, but you'd think that the Lawyer would keep his/her client's best interest at heart and tell them, "No. You can't do that. You won't win."

What we may have here is a Lawyer who is hoping that this company will back down. Even though the Lawyer knows there's not a snowball's chance in hell that they will win, but they're coming on hard with a legal letter hoping that their bluff is not called. Or maybe it's the client hoping that the company will just believe the bluff and go through the hassle of a name change (some do!).

With the "You're full of sh*t, this is why, and you're retarded if you think we're going to fall for this" letter to the Lawyer and client, they're getting a big list of other PSIs. I spent a good part of my morning google-ing for other PSIs out there and am sending them a list of those companies, complete with their logos and URLs. To hopefully stop this Lawyer, I've emailed all the listed "PSI" companies out there to keep an eye out for the law firm that's doing this and letting them know that the Lawyer has nothing to stand on and to not be intimidated by them.

Needless to say, the company is going to have to pony up for a Lawyer to represent them in this frivilous matter. And that just annoys the hell out of me. 2 Companies spend money on lawyers, no one really wins or gains anything. The companies only lose money that could have been spent on raises, new hires, training, etc.