| From: Mark Hanusz [ mailto:editor@equinoxpublishing.com ]
Sent: 08 December 2003 10:27
To: vhall@equinoxpub.com
Cc: jjoyce@equinoxpub.com ; ashipton@equinoxpub.com
Subject: Your website and company name
Dear Val Hall
Since you are in charge of rights and permissions, I thought you are the most appropriate person to address this query to. My name is Mark Hanusz, the managing editor of Equinox Publishing (Asia) Pte Ltd and owner of the domain www.equinoxpublishing.com. I noticed you recently called your company by the same name and since www.equinoxpublishing.com was already taken 4 years ago you registered www.equinoxpub.com. What strikes me as ironic is we are both in the publishing business and a big part of that business is rights. It appears that you have have no regard for these and copied our brand name. While legal action isn't feasible there does seem to be a breach of ethics at least, as well pretty bad business practice. Certainly you knew that there was another publishing company called Equinox Publishing (a simple google search would have sufficed) and there are many, many other names you could have chosen.
We chose the name equinox because I used to work in equities and the company was founded on the autumnal equinox 1999 and our first book was published on the vernal equinox 2000. Why did you call yours Equinox Publishing? Because you liked our name?
You are obviously aware that this will cause some confusion in the book trade and I wonder why anyone would do such a thing with full knowledge the name was already in use.
I am curious to know your response to this.
Sincerely
Mark Hanusz
Managing Editor
Equinox Publishing
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on 08/12/03 17:42, Janet Joyce at jjoyce@equinoxpub.com wrote:
Dear Mark Hanusz,
We registered in the UK, and the companies search here did not identify any other firm in the publishing business using Equinox. I didn't decide to copy your use of the word and until now had no idea of the existence of your press. The name was suggested to me by one of my authors. I don't imagine there will be any confusion in the book trade as we are an academic publisher. Not a single person has mentioned your firm to me, either, so I am not the only one. I attribute this to the fact that we work in entirely different spheres.
We will of course forward any queries to you.
Sincerely,
Janet Joyce
Managing Director
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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Hanusz [ mailto:editor@equinoxpublishing.com ]
Sent: 08 December 2003 11:28
To: Janet Joyce
Cc: Randvhall@aol.com ; ashipton@patrol.i-way.co.uk
Subject: Re: Your website and company name
Thanks for this Ms. Joyce. While I now believe there was nothing sinister on your part, wouldn't you agree that publishing is indeed a global business and one should be reasonably sensitive to terms and brands in other parts of the world? Perhaps a small publisher in Botswana would be difficult to locate but we have had the number one spot on google as well as every other search engine for the past 4 years. A two-second check would have shown that.
Perhaps you had someone else reserve the site for you but at least that person would have realized that equinoxpublishing.com was already taken so equinoxpub.com was registered instead.
Anyway, I even noticed that you have distribution arrangements all over the world, including Asia. So our spheres aren't that different and with the more books our respective companies, the greater the likelihood there will be confusion.
Judging from your catalog it appears that not one book has been actually published yet so it is not too late. In my opinion, the only honorable solution would be to change the name of your publishing company. We plan on being in this business for a long time and I am guessing you are as well. As we have already published 14 books it is not possible for us to change so I believe the burden falls on you for avoid confusion in Chicago, London and most importantly Frankfurt. Of course I would be happy to buy the domain equinoxpub.com back from you.
I urge your side to acknowledge that the world is bigger than the UK and simply ensuring that there are no other companies named Equinox Publishing in your country is insufficient due diligence.
Sincerely
Mark Hanusz
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From: Janet Joyce < jjoyce@equinoxpub.com >
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 13:09:16 -0000
To: < editor@equinoxpublishing.com >
Subject: RE: Your website and company name
Dear Mark Hanusz,
I am sorry but I cannot change the name of the company. Our first books will be published in the spring but we have already published 15 journal issues. In addition to books, as you will have noticed, we publish academic journals.
Certainly the world of academic publishing is global but the Asian market is not important to us, I must say, apart from Japan where there is a market for linguistics. I will absolutely do everything to avoid confusion at the various trade/rights events you mention. The markets that are important to us are the USA, UK , Europe, Australia and Japan but even within each territorial market, I only care about the academic sector.
Sincerely,
Janet Joyce
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Will do everything to avoid confusion? Yeah right. Type "equinox publishing" in google and try to figure out for yourself which reference is to which company. What a mess.
Anyway, since then I have of course tried legal action but because I didn't have a big presence in the UK at the time it became very clear that if I wanted to fight I could, but it would be very expensive. I don't know about you, but I would surely rather spend our firm's capital on making good books and not paying lawyer fees.
It is a pity that the unscrupulous founders of the company not only didn't do any due diligence with regard to choosing their name, but when notified of their infringement they decided not to do anything about it. I can't imagine why any author would entrust their publication rights to a company that paid no attention to rights when they chose their own name.
If anyone has any ideas on this please send me an email editor@equinoxpublishing.com.
Mark Hanusz
Publisher
Equinox Publishing
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