RSSRoxio Threatens Developer Over 'Easy CD' Use
By Nate Mook | Published January 30, 2002, 4:32 AM
Staking its claim on the term "Easy CD" Roxio has sent the legal hounds after Poikosoft, maker of Easy CD-DA Extractor - a title which Roxio claims is "confusingly similar" to its own trademarked Easy CD Creator. Roxio first contacted Poikosoft, a one-man company named after its Finnish founder Jukka Poikolainen, last October and demanded the name of Easy CD-DA Extractor be changed within thirty days.
"We do not need to show actual confusion, only the likelihood of confusion, to stop this infringing use," Roxio's lawyers wrote in a letter. "If you refuse, we are instructed by Roxio to take all necessary steps to protect its trademark and prevent confusion, including filing suit for trademark infringement...If we are forced to bring suit, we will ask for injunctive relief, damages, and attorneys' fees."
"I will not change the name of my software. The name is known in MP3 communities as a quality CD ripper because of the hard work I have put into it," Poikolainen told BetaNews. Poikolainen is confident because he is not the only developer using the "Easy CD" moniker, as it is utilized in numerous other freeware and shareware titles. But Roxio says "it appears that the CD Extractor software product is designed to perform the same functions as Roxio's Easy CD Creator," which puts Poikosoft directly in the company's sights.
Poikolainen attempted to contact Roxio to explain that his product performs a different task than Easy CD Creator, but did not receive a response. Easy CD-DA Extractor was designed to copy CD audio to a hard disk and encode the audio into compressed formats such as MP3. Easy CD Creator on the other hand was designed to create audio, video and data CDs, although recent versions of the software contain the ability to also convert songs to MP3.
Dates could prove to be a hindrance for Roxio, as Easy CD-DA Extractor was first released in February 1998, months before Easy CD Creator 4 made its debut with limited MP3 support. Roxio also did not register its trademark with the European Union until August 2001.
Poikolainen says he was surprised to receive the legal threat because Adaptec -- the parent company from which Roxio split in September 2000 -- had previously requested he remove instructions for installing ASPI drivers, but made no complaint about the name of his product.
The letter, which first surfaced on the CD-RW.org Web site, additionally demands Poikolainen cease offering downloads of his products via ZDNet and CNET - even after complying with a name change. Poikolainen sees such a requirement as punishment since Roxio itself does not offer its software for download, thus any chance of confusion is highly unlikely.
Roxio recently settled a dispute with CDDB owner Gracenote for access to the online database of album listings. Gracenote filed suit against Roxio over royalties and Roxio then countersued, attacking Gracenote for "attempting to misappropriate and monopolize access to public information."
Roxio did not respond to requests for comment, but told The Register that it had not yet decided whether to go forward with the case. "I don't think they have a case," said Poikolainen.
They need to put all the money they have into getting programmers and making a decent product not spending it on hotshot laywers to sue someone.
If anything they should be greatful, maybe someone will get confused and download Easy CD Creator thinking it is Easy CD Extractor, as no-one is going to download it otherwise :P
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|that company is pretty damn shady.. why cant they just leave people alone and stop trying to monopolize the industry and badger small companies for money, etc..
this whole thing is just retarded..
go use nero. its better.
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|It would be Nice if They STOPPED this S--t and make a damn product that works....Damn i wish Easy-cd was Adaptec was still making the product it accually WORKED THAN.
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|I have no problem destinguishing from the two products. Ez CD Extractor i use,, EZ cd creator i dont. I use Nero Burning and i have found it to be much easier to use. not to mention faster. I think they are just complaining to anyone they can because there are now other products out on the market and htey are not the monopoly anymore.
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|Just a little tid-bit: I did a search for "Easy CD" in google for the heck of it, to see what (or who) would come up:
1. Easy CD-DA Extractor
2. Roxio & Easy CD Creator 5
3. Adaptec (We've moved....)
4. More Roxio
5. EasySystems Japan Home
6. Easy CD MP3 Workshop (hmmmm...another ripper w/ 'Easy CD' in the name?)
Jukka was right when he said that he wasn't the only developer using 'Easy CD'.
I agree with earlier posts about the quality of Easy Coaster Creator. Or, lack there of. Roxio's software is junk, and has been for a while. Nero is my personal fav, and I use CloneCd for making copies. I've also used Easy CD-DA Extractor to make MP3s.
My personal guess is that Roxio's lawyers probably can't even tell a Big Mac from a Whopper and think that one or the other of the respective owners should be sued for infringing on the burger rights. Oh well...
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|They also threatened to charge me by email to "upgrade" to EZ coaster creator 5 so it would run on XP. I dumped it a long time ago.
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|It’s a sad day when you see a company try and get one over another developer. They must have their own head so far up their a** they have forgotten users know the difference between the names of the programs. Also, even if they did download it by mistake, why would they use it?
I mean, it’s not going to do what they wanted to download, nor would it look like what they know it looks like.
Perhaps the layers don’t know how to use a PC; maybe they didn’t download it, just run some kind of WebBot to search for keywords? If that’s the case, and it would be easy to find out when and if this case does to court, Jukka should think about counter-sue them for wasting time, stress, loss of earning and bandwidth, get you hosting company to help too.
Users are not stupid, and they will bite!
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|Just because Roxio cannot tell the difference between "Easy CD Creator" and "Easy CD-DA Extractor" does not mean that the rest of the world is even remotely as stupid as they are.
Dumb dumb dumb!
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|Yup we very well know the difference. it's simple. Roxio products sux and Easy CD-DA extractor is an excellent piece of software, worth all the money you pay for it. If anyone is hurting another then this is Roxio with it's bad name and stupid trademark lawsuit. Stop this s*** nd go make something more usefull and smart.
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|yet another case of "we arent making enough money with our crud products.... hmmm lets pick someone to attempt to claim damages (ie LOTS of money!) from."
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