Can You Believe This Davie Dude is Suing Me??
You'll probably imagine my astonishment when I received a letter in the mail recently that included a lawsuit from RE Mentors, Inc. and David Lindahl in reference to copyright and trademark infringement. Even more strange, the lawsuit was filed in Phoenix but I'm in Los Angeles and Davie is in Massachusetts.
I think this Phoenix attorney was the only one Davie could actually get to file a lawsuit based on laws that don't actually exist to support their claims based on her obvious lack of experience with these matters. Any other trademark or patent attorney that looked at the "reasons" why he wanted to file would laugh in his face and tell him that they wouldn't dare risk their Bar Card on such frivolity for fear of disbarment.
The main issues are that David Lindahl's discount bottom-of-the-barrel trademark attorney in Phoenix doesn't understand is that:
1) You can't trademark your name and then prevent everyone under the sun from writing about you, talking about you, or making references about you under the First Amendment.
2) You can't claim trademark infringement (which is a "confusion" of products in the marketplace) while claiming defamation of character at the same time under the Lanham Act; these are two completely contradictory claims. The definition of "trademark infringement" is when you are trying to make it seem like you are offering the EXACT product or service as offered by your competitor but when you are "defaming" someone in a derogatory manner...how would customers possibly think we were selling your competitor's product?
3) You can't file a case in a city/state (Phoenix, Arizona) and claim that the Plaintiff filing the case suffered "damages" there when the Plaintiff is actually is in a completely different state on the east coast.
Other issues:
1) The items that Davie and company are claiming I "stole" have been trademarked by me through the Library of Congress since 2007. What's even more interesting is that when doing a copyright registration search under "David Lindahl" you will find that nothing was copyright registered before 2008 yet he claims that his Apartment House Riches course was copyright registered sometime in 2007. Interesting...then where the hell is the registered "filing" through the copyright registration database?
2) I don't do the Google marketing campaigns. Much of that marketing is farmed out to third-party sources. I take no responsibility for the "defamation" claims he has indicated.
3) I don't actually own Global Success Strategies, Inc. and the company itself has licensed my products and services from me through my consulting firm.
4) I have never bought a a course, book, manual, DVD, or CD from David Lindahl or RE Mentors, Inc. I have never read through Davie's materials. I never bought any books by him through Amazon.com or anywhere else. I know NOTHING about Davie's real estate investing methodology and if his books or manuals told everyone to do a moon dance in order to get real estate transactions done, I would be NONE the wiser. I once had a student offer to show me Davie's course but I never received it...or maybe I did but my assistant probably threw it in the trash because she knew it was junk mail!
When I talked to Davie's discount attorney in Phoenix, she said, "Well, I really wanted to sue you personally and not the company at all."
Hmmm...Sounds like a PERSONAL VENDETTA to me, doesn't it?
Apparently this woman doesn't know how rampant phony names are on the internet. How did she know that "Monica Main" is a real person and not some pseudonym that someone made up? How does she actually know my affiliation or responsibility with Global Success Strategies, Inc.? How is she going to pin personal liability upon an individual when a company represents marketing and product sales?
Not very smart if you ask me...
Wouldn't it be something for her if "Monica Main" was a made up name that some brilliant marketer pulled out of the air one day. Then this "Top-of-the-Class-Law-School-Graduate" would be suing (and ultimately placing a judgment upon) a person who is a figment of someone's imagination.
Too bad that isn't really the case...
Then Davie's overly irate attorney expressed how upset she was at me because I "wrote" her some emails questioning her legal knowledge and...how dare I? I said that I knew of no such emails and if she would kindly forward them to me. She forwarded me the emails and they were signed by someone else and said that even though they weren't by me...they were "by me," or so she thought.
What? What the hell does that mean? The emails weren't by me but she assumed that they were written by me (and signed by someone else) and therefore she is mad at me for writing a couple of emails belittling her intelligence in the legal field...
By then I'm questioning whether she has any brain cells at all because even a reasonably intelligent 4-year-old can figure out that if someone else's name is on something, IT DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU!!
But I guess that's what you get when you choose a discount attorney...
I believe that Davie is finally feeling the heat from some honest, bona-fide competition and "doesn't like it" so he trumps up a bogus lawsuit strewn with lies that he can't possibly back up (like the one about me buying his course through RE Mentors, Inc. which I have NEVER done...I am too cheap to waste $1,000 on a pile of outdated books on real estate) and about how "famous" the name David Lindahl is in the world of real estate...
That one makes me laugh! Famous? I never even heard of "David Lindahl" until a couple of years ago when I had several students of mine complaining about what a rip off artist he is. THAT is how I first heard of David Lindahl and I have yet to hear ANYTHING positive about the guy from anyone I have ever talked to.
You wanna know who's "famous" in "real estate investing education," Davie? Try Robert Allen, Donald Trump, Carleton Sheets, Robert Kiyosaki...NOT YOU! Not a chance! (I'm glad I don't profess to be a "guru" because only a "guru" would try to make himself "famous" for writing a course on investing in real estate...and I'm not THAT arrogant!)
(Also, how many truly "famous" and wealthy real estate gurus do YOU know that would so cheap as to pay a couple thousand dollars to a "law firm" in a state 2,000 miles away that offers a trademark and lawsuit "package deal.")
Davie even claimed in the lawsuit that I was "illegally" creating competition for him. Illegally creating competition? I thought it was called a MONOPOLY when a company DIDN'T have competition and the last time I checked, THAT was illegal!
Some advice for you if you ever need to sue somebody...
When suing someone, make sure you get a competent attorney who knows a little bit about how corporate law works and doesn't want to file needlessly against people personally because of being butt-hurt over an email "somebody" wrote. However, if you decide to hire a schmuck from some online FormYourTrademarkToday.com-type of bogus discount "law firm" to form your trademark, you can't expect to get quality legal representation when it comes time to filing a lawsuit and you'll probably have more success getting better legal work done by a local 2nd-year law student who works the late-night shift at your local 7-11.
Just thought you would like to hear my two cents in the matter since everyone else seems to have their opinions.
My advice to you: focus on making money and on building your financial future and be LESS concerned with nonsense you are reading about on the Internet because it just isn't that important, folks!
See you at the top!
Monica Main
