General comments on DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY presentation of the material
First general comments on the presentation and the way it was written.
It arrived First Class, not even recorded, so that if I did not start publishing the documents, they would not have had a simple proof of delivery. Bad mistake on the side of a law firm that claims to be internationally renown and to have more than 3,100 lawyers in 59 offices in 22 countries
. Is this just a neglect or they are so short of money that splashing a couple of pounds for recorded delivery is unaffordable luxury for them?
Note the heading of the cover letter - instead of WWW.EASY-MOBILES.CO.UK it actually reads WW.W.EASY-MOBILES.CO.UK. Is this a clever legal move 
? I doubt it. Most likely a typho, but the one that can cost a lot. I don’t want their typist to be fired - we are in the same boat, but the whole firm looks rather unprofessional to say the least.
I doubt Stelios will be pleased, after all they charge him for doing his bidding whilst they can not even do their job properly. Alternatively though, DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY UK LLP may just be another of his pet projects and in this case he shouldn’t worry too much about spending so much - he might be just moving the money from his own left pocket to his right pocket. However, if I am right some strange things are starting to come together.
Let’s look at the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY website.
Note firstly the use of the colour orange at the top of each page (except the front page) being the same colour orange as that used by easyGroup as part of its brand identity (exact phrasing of this document).
In fact I must admit that #EF4222 isn’t exactly orange, but again it is a matter of definition and to some it may look, oh horror, ORANGE. (See also my approach to orange problem).
Secondly, look at this strange piece of code at the top of each page, as they say:
<!-- Coalesys WebMenu for ASP.NET --> <!-- EVALUATION VERSION --> <!-- WebMenu HTML Structure COPYRIGHT 2000-2005 Coalesys, Inc. -->
What attracts your immediate attention is of course the EVALUATION VERSION bit. Go to Coalesys and you’ll see that Coalesys WebMenu for ASP costs $199.00 to $1,990.00 depending on the type of licensing. According to the License Agreement This license is granted for a period of thirty (30) days after the initial installation.. I am not a lawyer to establish if DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY are actually in breach of this agreement but the very fact that an international law firm that seemingly specialises in digital rights keeps this piece of code in their web pages is quite telling. A clear sign of negligence and incompetence to say the least, a complete disgrace would be the right word (remind you DLA most likely stands for Digital Law Attorneys - am I right?).
Obviously, those who were developing the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY web identity were doing it on the cheap. I would expect the use of evaluation version on personal homepages or sites like mine but not in business production environment. Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi should be read the other way round in this case.
Marginalia: Shall I report my findings to the rightful copyright owner or give DLA PRGC some time to clean up their act?
On second thought - shall I rather charge DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY for debugging their unattractive-looking website? This won’t be cheap .
So, what are our findings about DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY so far?
They are:
- Doing things on the cheap
- Providing poor service to their clients / customers
- Careless, incompetent and negligent at the level of presentation
- Possibly infringing copy rights of third parties
Don’t you see any similarity between this and policies of their client (or patron?) easyGroup?
I suggest DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY should rebrand as easylaw.com. Hopefully the current domain registrant Amerifax Services Corp. wouldn’t mind giving it to Stelios for free and Stelios wouldn’t mind giving free it to his patrons / clients(?).
PS This posting was on presentation only - give me some time, a day or two and you’ll see the analysis of their legal claims bit by bit.
tags: coalesys, dla piper rudnick gray cary, digital law, domain dispute, evaluation software, lawyers, software license
June 13th, 2006 at 7:16 am
[…] Easy Mobiles Easy-Mobiles vs easyMobile and the story of this domain « General comments on DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY presentation of the material […]
June 14th, 2006 at 1:09 am
[…] Foolishly I assumed that this very web site is my public response to their letters. Little did I know that they actually expect something with a bit of personal touch (a letter?, a phonecall may be?). These two things just once again show that in the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY UK LLP they not only do not read what they put in envelops, but also that they are generally not doing the rest of their job properly. Consider that I first noticed this in the first DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY letter on the 26 of May (the letter itself went online a day earlier) and mentioned this for the second time here. In effect this means that for all this time neither the Lawyers nor their clients ever bothered to look at the domain in question! Not being myself an obsessive attention seeker, I take the lack of interest from the side of people whom I’d rather avoid anyway as a good sign but to add to this it also makes defending the job of defending easy-mobiles domain much easier. Firstly, it is yet another argument confirming bad faith on the side of the easyGroup IP Licensing Limited as it clearly demonstrates the lack of genuine interest in the domain itself but rather looks as a poor implementation of scare tactics. Secondly, I assume that if this matter will ever go to court and/or will be presented to the Nominet, this website will be assesed in all its entirety. If a big Law Firm wishes to be reputed as a laughing stock, than who am I to prevent them from doing this? Well, I honestly don’t know if Stelios somehow enjoys preferential treatment from the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY UK LLP and this is a part of their VIP Service or this is just their general policy, but with this degree of incompetence and negligence they are certainly not at the top of my list of Law Firms now. […]