Warning: I am not a lawyer - take all comment with care, but I have been doing this for some time. One important thing to remember is that your use of that fairly unique term predating his gives you clear trademark owner ship -- no I did not say 'registered trademark' -- that is a legal process and one you might want to explore, and is needed to pursue any legal remedies. I agree with Tish, I doubt you will need to, if you have a pleasant discussion with him -- I would angle for him helping you with his name recognition if he has that. We have had some discussion of the legalities of registering here, check the archives. Rich Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 5:36:39 PM, you wrote: CDG> ** Be a Good Dobee and help the group, you must be counted to post . CDG> ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. CDG> Two years ago I started a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) consulting CDG> business named "GISmatters". When I set things up in June of 2004, I did CDG> exhaustive research to make sure I wasn't in conflict with anything out CDG> there - at the time, all variations of "gis.*matter.*", and even other CDG> GIS-related text ending in "matters" - were non-existent. CDG> It was just brought to my attention that for about a year now, a CDG> high-profile employee of ESRI, the dominant GIS software producer, has been CDG> running a blog called "GIS Matters", with a web address of CDG> gismatters.blogspot.com. This guy (David Maguire), has authored some books CDG> on GIS and is fairly widely known. CDG> Not looking for legal advice from you all - not even sure I could or would CDG> want to pursue this as a legal matter - but wondering what advice any of CDG> you might have (perhaps from personal experience) on whether and how to CDG> communicate with the blogger, what to ask for, etc. It's unfortunate that CDG> I didn't discover it sooner - he's not likely to be eager to simply abandon CDG> the identity after a year of blogging. And for all I know I shouldn't even CDG> expect him to... CDG> I'm not even sure this presents a real problem for me... who knows, maybe CDG> it's an opportunity? I'm hoping that some feedback might help me to CDG> clarify what steps to take from here, if any, to address what feels like a CDG> potentially confusing and/or damaging incursion into my business identity. CDG> Thanks in advance, CDG> Chris -- Best regards, Rich mailto:rich at on-the-net.com