A open letter to all my LinkedIn contacts

I'm writing this post simply as an alert that I may need your support at a later date. Especially all my LinkedIn contacts who are active consumer advocates and agents of consumer protection regulatory bodies within their state governments.

I was contacted recently by the attorney of a payday lending company with a similar name to my own with regard to what the attorney who wrote the letter considers trademark infringement. The letter stated that if I did not change my brand name and design that they would consider “other options” to protect their trademark. Essentially a veiled threat of a trademark infringement lawsuit If I didn't immediately cease and desist the use of Money Tree Ventures LLC as my company name and brand.

I won't name the company yet because this attorney may simply have been doing his job, but it would be easy enough for anyone who reads this to figure out who I'm talking about with a simple Google search.

Again, the entire reason for me posting this is to be preemptive in the event that the owner of this company makes the unwise decision to move forward with a trademark infringement lawsuit and somehow manages to get a judge to place a gag order to prevent me dispensing any public information about the ongoing legal action. Something I promised I would make VERY PUBLIC if they moved forward.

This post giving a summary of what any potential legal action may be about would certainly not fall under any a gag order that could potentially be issued at a later date.

Here’s the crux of their complaint:

They have several trademarks regarding the name of their company, however, in each of those trademarks they specifically state that they do not have exclusive use of the word “money”. The design of their logo also includes a tree, as does mine. However, their trademark that includes the logo has a very specific design that is in no way similar to my own logo aside from the fact that they both have stylized trees in them (that no one would confuse) and the company name is similar but not the same. The letter states that their concern is that both companies offer financial services (mine does not, I publish books, unless you consider blogs and books that teach financial literacy as falling under the broad category of ‘financial services’ ) and people who are “seeking financial advice” from their company may confuse the two companies as being related based on my company's name and logo and/or URLs.

Note again that this is a payday loan/check cashing company and the only thing that they provide that could be remotely considered as ‘financial advice’ is the ultra-generic posts ( the kind found on a hundred other blogs) that they include on what they call their blog, in which each post is essentially a thinly disguised click bait for a promotion for some service of their business. My company, in contrast, is primarily a publishing company that teaches financial literacy via my book The Millennial Money Tree, my blogs, and (outside of publishing, which they were not aware of apparently) my financial coaching services (most of which I do pro bono). I literally teach financial literacy.

In addition, because there are more than half a dozen other companies truly in the financial services space that have essentially the same name or a very similar name to this payday lending company, one of which has its own trademarks, the others of which do not, and some of which describe their primary business as specifically providing ‘financial advice’ and also have a tree in their logo, one could easily imagine that the reason that I am being targeted is because what I publish literally teaches people why they should not use the services of the company making this trademark infringement threat, and they are afraid my company’s name may become a little too popular over time, thus (potentially) reducing their business.

Again, that may be conjecture and this attorney may simply be doing what he’s paid to do – protect a trademark by going after what he might have assumed is an easy target. I am not.

That said, while I have no malice toward the family owners of this payday lending company, their business is one that truly anyone would have to describe as, at best, a “necessary evil”, i.e., one that takes advantage of those who are NOT financially literate and/or in perhaps dire need, by charging upwards of over 500% APR in some states, and having been fined and censored many times for illegal activities related to consumer protection laws over the years. Additionally, the owner has gone on record as saying that Covid negatively impacted his business – not because he was forced to close by mandates – but because the then high unemployment rates decreased his traffic in certain areas, and rather than get PPP loans to keep his employees on payrolls, he had to add to the unemployment ranks by closing several locations. After all, you can’t get a payday loan if you don’t have a job.

Seriously.

This is a company that invests millions in political donations and lobbyists to seek favor from those in charge of consumer protection laws (thankfully unsuccessfully from what I’ve been able to find), and while touting itself as a business that treats its employees “like family”, the reviews on such websites as Glassdoor speak otherwise in volumes.

In hopes of preventing any legal action, I naturally made mention that they do not have exclusive rights to the words in my company's name, nor an all-encompassing use of trees in logos for companies with similar names, and I proactively provided them with a consumer market research study of more than 350 people that clearly shows that any confusion between the two companies based on the name logo or URL was negligible at best (less than 2%). Naturally if they pursue some legal action I'll do a much larger study which will likely make the disparity even more obvious and present both studies in court.

Based on my conversations with attorneys who specialize in trademark law, if this company moves forward with a trademark infringement lawsuit they will likely lose but it would be a total waste of money and time for me. And I value my time more than money, a considerable amount having already been wasted on this nonsense.

If in fact they do move forward, I would hope that I can count on all of you to condemn that company and its action against me not simply based on a frivolous lawsuit related to names and trademarks but because it would be quite obvious that this would be a power play by a “Goliath” multimillionaire with deep pockets to prevent a very vocal consumer advocate “David”, whose goal is to teach people the financial literacy principles that would keep people from ever needing the services of a payday lender, from potentially usurping his #1 spot on search engine results for the words “Money Tree”.

I’ll let you all know if this moves forward, but thanks in advance for your support.

UPDATE: They backed off. Hopefully I never hear from them again, but I'm "keeping my powder dry" just in case. ;)