[S] Measures To Prevent "Attorney Online" Mistaken Identity

[Calvinball]

Seeing as Ace Attorney Online has been mistaken for the roleplay site "Attorney Online" on numerous occasions, it might be a good idea to add some text to the homepage to the effect of "No affiliation with the roleplay site 'Attorney Online.'"

[Enthalpy]

I'd be in favor of that. It'll need to be multilingual, of course, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Right after the line, "No download, no hassle - just sign up and start writing your own game from your favourite web browser !" maybe?

[kwando1313]

Aw, but I have so much fun quoting my post over and over again, telling people this is AAO, not Attorney Online! D:

[Unas]

Not mentioning the fact that the aceattorneyonline.com domain has been bought by Attorney Online, not helping in the least with the confusion...
I guess we should clarify that indeed.

[kwando1313]

Huh. How come you never got the aceattorneyonline.com domain name?

[E.D.Revolution]

Try to buy it from him if possible.

[Unas]

@kwando : Because I didn't care so much about the domain name. Originally, I didn't want to pay for AAO, and I was hosted for free by sparklin and got the subdomain from them as well. Later on, I started getting a paid hosting because that was needed to cope with AAO's increasing popularity, but I still didn't have that much money to spend and never saw the point of paying for a domain on top of that.
And now that I do have money, I just didn't think about it, until I was contacted by the owner of the new domain who informed me about it.

@ED, He acquired it a few weeks ago, knowing perfectly the situation since he was the one to tell me about it, so I don't think he will sell it now - or at a relatively high price, expecting to benefit from it, which I won't pay. What I will discuss with him is the possibility of having the same kind of disclaimer on his site redirecting to here.

[E.D.Revolution]

Damn, that is recent.

[energizerspark]

@ED, He acquired it a few weeks ago, knowing perfectly the situation since he was the one to tell me about it, so I don't think he will sell it now - or at a relatively high price, expecting to benefit from it, which I won't pay.

Wow, that's kinda a dick move. And I'm assuming there's no real legal action you can take against him?

[E.D.Revolution]

I agree. But Unas didn't fire the first punch, so... and it looks like it's perfectly legal.

[Unas]

Yep, it's perfectly legal, and no, I can't take action.
I mean, the only ground on which I might take legal action would be if AAO was a registered trademark or something (and even then, it probably wouldn't be enough). Obviously it isn't, since AA itself is a trademark which does not belong to me - I can hardly pretend to register AAO in this situation

Also, to be clear : he did not propose to sell the domain to me at a high price - it's just what I would expect him to do if I suddenly asked to buy the domain he just bought.
So far, it simply looks like he bought the domain for Attorney Online and that's it. There is no reason to call him a dick yet, though I do think he could have chosen a better domain to avoid confusion...

There was a strange move though : when he opened the domain and contacted me, he set it to redirect to AAO instead of AO. I was the one who requested that he redirects somewhere else, because I didn't want people to use AAO through a domain which doesn't belong to me or someone I can trust, it would be way too unsafe.


Of course, there is also the possibility that the guy who contacted me is not actually the owner of AO, but some random troll who bought the domain and expects to sell it to the highest bidder between me and AO. That happens...

In any case, we'll see.