Trademark an Email address?

[barkingmad]

This was sent to me and not to Google who obviously own "gmail.com"

"Since becoming aware of the use of the name [email protected], as the owner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office protected mark “?????????”, we require the following:

Identification as to who currently has proprietary rights to the [email protected] address under GMail’s Terms of Service.

Confirmation of the discontinuance of such address by above party, and the transfer of the account rights to ?????????, LLC.

Failure to comply with the above steps will result in suit to protect the integrity of the mark “?????????”."


Gmail's TOS says;

"Prohibited Actions
.............. users may not:
Sell, trade, resell .........or transfer any Gmail account"

Is this just a bluff?

 

[jdk]

Not sure why this is in the articles. You may want to post this in the legal forum for better responses.

 

[jora]

Bullshit, there are thousands of email services, and they have right to reserve that address([email protected], [email protected], etc...) ???
Of course NO!

 

[007]

I would ignore it if I were you. They can't get any of your contact information anyway since Gmail won't give that out.

 

[actnow]

Did they send the email from their gmail acct?

I would suggest you have a backup email address. Since, Google might
"cave in" if the person contacts Google.

I wonder if this person also contacted the users at Yahoo, Hotmail, etc ???