Rippln sued for trademark infringement
When we last checked in on Rippln, we noted that the company had gone suspiciously quiet for a few weeks. I say suspiciously because prior to the silence it was a task in itself to sift through Rippln’s hype machine and keep track of the company.
Firing back through Troy Dooly (who “works for some of the investors in Rippln”), CEO Brian Underwood (right) explained that the lack of communication was due to US holidays.
[2:38] I said Brian you’ve been silent, what’s happening?
He said “what are you talking about, it’s Thanksgiving. Some of us left down and went to Thanksgiving prior, some afterwards
We’re still conducting business. Matter of fact we do two calls a week, that isn’t being silent.
Now we haven’t done blog posts and stuff. I can’t win for losing, with you or these other critics.
If I make too much noise, you guys tell me I’m hyping this stuff. If I don’t make any noise cuz we’re working, then we’re “running” or we’re having a eulogy or some crap like that.
Shortly after Underwood’s response, Rippln released its long-awaited Communicator App… and then things went quiet again. A few posts popped up on Rippln’s Facebook page during December, with the last one a Christmas message dated December 25th.
Almost a fortnight later there’s been nothing from Rippln corporate, with affiliates once again left wondering what is going on:
No doubt Underwood’s answer would be “well it’s Christmas and New Years, can’t we get a break”, and for that reason I was going to leave writing a followup till mid January or so.
I say “was” because yesterday news broke that this time around, there might be an entirely different reason for Rippln’s silence. One that strikes at and threatens the future of the company altogether…
In a lawsuit filed on December 27th in a District Court of California, Ripple Labs are accusing Rippln of trademark infringement. As part of their sought relief, Ripple Labs are also requesting a preliminary injunction be granted, which would effectively shut down Rippln’s business operations in their entirety.
Ripple Labs, and I must admit this confused me, assert that both Ripple Labs and Rippln ‘operate in the world of virtual currency‘.
According to Ripple Labs lawsuit,
Under the RIPPLE Trademark, Ripple Labs offers services whereby individuals can create, credit, and disburse money—both real and virtual—to people within a peer-to-peer social network.
This service acts as an alternative to the current on-line currency exchange services presently in existence by offering a truly decentralized exchange service and also providing a platform by which individuals may grant or extend credit to one another.
The credit created under the RIPPLE Trademark has become a new form of digital currency.
Rippln on the other hand is an MLM company that pushes products through a company-wide network marketing compensation structure.
Decide for yourself, here’s the basis for Ripple Labs’ “virtual currency” claim:
Defendants’ goods and services include compensating users monetarily and through value equivalents in the form of Defendants’ own virtual currency in connection with Defendants’social networking platform.
For example, Defendants are now using RIPPLE and RIPPLN in connection with an “incentivized sharing” concept (i.e., getting paid for sharing), that has been called “the new model of currency,” thereby associating themselves with currency and monetary value.
If I’m reading that right, Ripple Labs are asserting that volume (typically Personal Volume (PV)), constitute a virtual currency.
That would mean every MLM company, according to Ripple Labs, is operating a virtual currency in that they use points of some sort to track commissions.
Ponzi points (as used by Zeek Rewards and Better Living Global Marketing for example) are most definitely a virtual currency, but product sale PV points? I’m not convinced on that one seeing as you can’t trade the points.
You sell something, the company tracks a point value to your affiliate account and then they pay you at set intervals based on that value. Bit different to a virtual currency.
And I think there might be some misunderstanding with the whole “new model of currency” in Rippln’s marketing material. Again, unless I’m mistaken, that refers to downlines as a currency, rather than volume points within Rippln’s compensation plan itself.
It’ll be interesting to see if a court agrees Rippln are infact trading in a virtual currency or not.
Continuing on, Ripple Labs then go on to slam Rippln’s business model:
While Plaintiff Ripple Labs is an established, well-respected, and highly legitimate on-line currency exchange service, known within the industry and major publications as the “next big thing” in virtual currency, Defendants (Rippln) operate a social networking platform that is essentially nothing more than an online pyramid scheme.
A bit of overindulgence on the self-flattery… but openly declaring Rippln to be “an online pyramid scheme”? Oh snap!
And Ripple Labs don’t stop there…
(Rippln’s) actions are calculated to, and actually do, deceive consumers about the source and quality of their services.
As a result, Defendants are harming consumers and potential consumers of Ripple Labs by intentionally causing confusion as to the source of Defendants’ goods and services, and at the same time irreparably damaging the goodwill associated with Ripple Labs and its RIPPLE trademark.
Defendants have also engaged in cybersquatting by registering and using the domain names rippln.com and startmyripple.com with a bad faith intent to cause confusion with Ripple Labs’ RIPPLE Trademark and to profit from such use.
I don’t quite think Rippln’s domain acquisition amounts to cybersquatting, but it’s an open-secret the company has failed to really do anything with the two domains mentioned.
On the trademark infringement issue, this seems to revolve primarily around similarities between Rippln and Ripple Labs’ respective logos, and use of the term “ripple” by Rippln.
Are Ripple Labs and Rippln’s logos similar?
The fonts are similar and you can clearly see where Rippln got their inspiration from… but it’s a totally different colour-scheme. And Rippln putting smiley faces in the three circles is probably enough to differentiate the two logos from each other.
The use of “ripple” though might be where Rippln comes undone.
Anybody who’s even vaguely aware of Rippln will be familiar with all the talk at Rippln about “starting a ripple”, the “ripple effect”, “growing your ripple” and so on and so forth.
This I don’t know how Rippln can talk themselves out of and clearly, if a Judge agrees Rippln are operating a virtual currency business, could land them in hot water.
Especially when you consider that
On May 24, 2013, Ripple Labs filed a Notice of Opposition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, requesting that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board deny the ‘124 application and the ‘099 application on the grounds that the Infringing Mark, RIPPLN, is confusingly similar to Ripple Labs’ RIPPLE Trademark pursuant to Section 2(d) of the Trademark Act.
Ripple Labs’ lawsuit doesn’t make any mention of a resolution to their “Notice of Opposition”, but it demonstrates that Rippln were aware of the issue as far back as May 2013.
As Ripple Labs observe:
Perhaps most notably, Defendants have recently started to call their leadership team the “Ripple Success Team.”
And according to Ripple Labs, the end result of all of the above is that
Although Defendants have only recently started to use the Infringing Marks in commerce, there have already been at least a dozen documented instances of actual confusion with Ripple Labs’ RIPPLE Trademark.
On one occasion, Ripple Lab’s CEO and Co-Founder Mr. Larsen was approached by an acquaintance from his son’s soccer team who received an invitation to join the Infringing RIPPLN Website, and was under the impression that Ripple Labs and Mr. Larsen were associated with the social networking scheme.
The user signed up for the Rippln website, solely because he thought it was associated with Mr. Larsen.
Mr. Larsen was thereafter approached by his personal trainer, Milton Quining. Mr. Quining excitedly told Mr. Larsen that his daughter got the invitation for “Ripple” and “signed right up.”
In fact, Mr. Quining’s daughter had signed up for the Rippln service—not for Ripple Labs’ service—because she was under the impression that it was associated with Ripple Labs and Mr. Larsen.
Thereafter, on April 26, 2013, users communicating on a Bitcoin Talk Forum were similarly under the impression that RIPPLE and RIPPLN were associated with one another, and were under the false impression that users needed an invitation to take advantage of RIPPLE services, as they did with the RIPPLN service.
It wasn’t until a Ripple Labs employee corrected the users, that they realized the two services were unaffiliated.
On May 10, 2013, Alan Safahi, founder and CEO of ZipZap, Inc. and a business colleague of Mr. Larsen’s, contacted Mr. Larsen to inquire whether he was familiar with the website startmyripple.com, and further stated that Mr. Safahi’s clients were confused about the relationship between the parties.
Next, on May 11, 2013, in a discussion board called RippleForum on Ripple Labs’ website, one user inquired about the relationship between RIPPLE and RIPPLN, and if they were one in the same.
Another RIPPLE user corrected the confusion, noting that the two were “completely unaffiliated” and added:
“… It’s easy to mix the two up for newcomers I think some of the people who got hyped about Rippln will stumble upon Ripple, which might be a beneficial side effect; Ripple is mostly know by BTC [Bitcoin] enthusiasts for now.
I just hope there won’t be too much confusion and that the two will become distinguishable….”
Similarly on another discussion forum, wickedfire.com, an additional instance of actual confusion occurred, wherein one user explains to the other the difference between the two services:
“Rippln’ and ‘Ripple’ are two different things. ‘Ripple’ is meant to be a virtual currency gateway that is due to launch, that allows you to exchange BTC [bitcoin] for fiat or whatever you want. That’s what’s been incorporated into Bitstamp.
‘Rippln’ is a pyramid ponzi scheme. One is trading on the other’s name to attract members….”
The examples of confusion provided by Ripple Labs goes on, mostly citing instances of those in BitCoin circles confusing or having to clarify the difference between the two companies to others.
I can totally see where Ripple Labs are coming from on this point, and I think this is the core strength of their case.
All up, in support of their preliminary injunction Ripple Labs allege Rippln are guilty of
- creating confusion which has “irreparably damaged” Ripple Labs’ brand
- infringing on Ripple Labs’ “Ripple” trademark by using ‘the identical name “Ripple” and the nearly identical mark “Rippln”‘
- an intention by Rippln to “expand their services” (to further compete with Ripple Labs)
- acting in “bad faith”
- promoting Rippln whose services “overlap” ‘channels of trade and consumers‘ of Ripple Labs
Ripple Labs has suffered irreparable harm and will continued to do so absent preliminary injunctive relief.
The loss of control over the movant’s name and reputation and loss of goodwill has consistently been held to constitute irreparable injury.
As discussed above, Defendants’ acts are causing immediate, irreparable harm to Ripple Labs that urgently requires injunctive relief.
If Defendants are permitted to continue their illegal practices, Ripple Labs will continue to suffer substantial damage to its reputation as well as losses to its revenue and erosion of its customer base.
This amounts to an enormous hardship on Ripple Labs.
On the other hand, Defendants have no lawful right to a website built from intellectual property they knowingly stole from Ripple Labs.
As such, issuance of a preliminary injunction will impose no legitimate or legally recognizable hardship on Defendants.
The preliminary injunction sought by Ripple Labs, if granted, would immediately prohibit Rippln from
- using Ripple Labs’ RIPPLE trademark or any confusingly similar variation thereof, including but not limited to the mark, RIPPLN
- diluting, blurring, passing off, or falsely designating the origin of Ripple Labs’ RIPPLE trademark and from injuring Ripple Labs’ goodwill and reputation
- doing any other act or thing likely to induce the belief that the Defendants’ services are in any way connected with, sponsored, affiliated, licensed, or endorsed by Ripple Labs
- registering, using or trafficking in any domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to Ripple Labs’ RIPPLE trademark, including but not limited to rippln.com, startmyripple.com, and ripplncommunicator.com
- using or displaying the RIPPLE trademark or any variation thereof, including without limitation the word mark RIPPLN, for goods or services in any location, circumstance or environment, including on the Internet, or as domain names, email addresses, meta tags, invisible data, or otherwise engaging in acts or conduct that would cause confusion as to the source, sponsorship or affiliation of Defendants with Ripple Labs
Or in not so many words, ensure that “Rippln” as a business no longer exists.
Ripple Labs lawsuit names Terry Lacore, LaCore Enterprises, LLC and Rippln Inc. as defendants, none of which to date have filed a reply (due 24th of January).
Meanwhile a hearing for the request of a preliminary injunction has been set for February 6th.
And as far as I’m aware of, no public statement has been issued by Rippln addressing the lawsuit.
You’ve got to wonder if they’re considering throwing the towel in or not. The release of Rippln Communicator, delayed as it was, didn’t really seem to achieve anything other than a bit of affiliate cheerleading on the company’s Facebook page.
Will fighting Ripple Labs’ lawsuit trigger a point of diminishing returns threshold for the company, or will Rippln fight it and press on?
Stay tuned…
Update 2nd February 2014 – After previously requesting an extension to reply to Ripple Labs’ lawsuit, Rippln has applied for a further one week extension to the initial February 6th response deadline. They’ve also asked for a two week extension on the hearing date.
In their motion, Rippln claim to have
entered into discussions (with Ripple Labs) that may resolve or limit the issues that need to be presented to the Court in this matter, and request a brief extension of these deadlines to continue those discussions.
The motion has to be granted by a Judge but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be (Ripple Labs don’t have a reason to oppose it).
New dates if the motion goes through will be February 13th for a response and opposition to the injunction, and March 6th for a hearing.
Update 15th February 2014 – Following the collapse of Rippln, a settlement has been reached in the lawsuit. According to a “Standby Order of Dismissal” filed on the 13th of February,
The Court has been informed that the above-entitled action has settled. Accordingly, the
Court vacates all pretrial and trial dates.The parties are required to file a stipulation of dismissal by April 14, 2014.
The terms of the settlement have not been made public.
Its all over for Rippln they have embarrassed themselves to the whole world and all those 1.4 Million members they suckered into joining.
Good luck starting another scam again. What do you say now Troy Dooly?
Terry LaCore has deep pockets through bHIP. The question is how much of his money is he willing to spend on this disaster of a venture that went on for a year now with just bad news after bad news?
It’s easy enough to prove that confusion between the two brands has occurred and is ongoing and there is no doubt that any such confusion causes damage to Ripple Labs’ brand.
Is that enough to win the case? I don’t really know.
What I do know is that an objection to Rippln’s trademark application was filed almost seven months ago and it defies logic to suppose that attorneys for the respective parties haven’t contacted each other long before this lawsuit was filed. If a simple, amicable solution could have been agreed to it would have happened already.
Now, it’s in the courts. I guess the question becomes is Rippln viable enough to warrant funding a legal battle?
It is very hard to overstate just how incompetent Rippln’s leadership has proven themselves to be. No matter what it was shoved up, they never found a foot they couldn’t shoot themselves in.
Where prior to last week the only thing they really had to worry about was the damage this fiasco was doing to their own reputations, today they also need to worry if they can be held culpable for their humiliation becoming contagious.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Budd is claiming to have taken a genetic test that proves he is related to Napoleon.
You can’t make this kind of stupid up.
@cheers… which napoleon? #1 or #3, they are quite a bit different. #3 was a riverboat gambler before he made himself emperor 🙂
Does he think he’ll die in jail though?
these putrid ripple made me spend money and time to promote this network, they are just cursed. and then they came up with a training course from the value of $ 500 to sell to friends on how to become a millionaire in 30 seconds, and with their original watch that brings people back in time.
it was a big rip off and I know friends burned because of them, whom I shall, I very nearly the cause.
Those logos are practically identical, a good lawyer should be able to find enough to exploit likeness, hell the concept is even somewhat the same.
Regardless of how this name thing turns out – Rippln was DONE months ago!
You can only Vision Cast so long without results.
It couldn’t happen to a better group of crooks and idiots!
Napoleon Dynamite?
Whoever started Rippln belongs in prison! How long can they continue to SCAM people??
They’re having a blowout Rippln 2.0 event in Vegas this month – right?!? I haven’t seen ANYTHING mentioned about it though.
Their last event had less people than the lines for the bathrooms (By the way – the bathrooms were full of less….you know)!
Seems this is JB’s attempt to walk away from the mess called Rippln with some integrity!
http://jonathanbudd.com/what-happened-to-jonathan-budd/
No sign of the CEO, Brian Underwood, for weeks. Are people still on holiday in the US??
Get out of the Ripple!
So you’re saying making up a surgery, telling people that your naturopath was able to take his testosterone level, and (true or false, still douchey) then going on about being molested… is INTEGRITY?
If that’s integrity I don’t want to see him with a lack of integrity.
That JB Video was a ridiculous excuse riddled rant formulated to make up for his time screwing people in Rippln and neglecting the audience that got him where he’s at while doing it.
This goes into my Blah, Blah, Blah / Smoke and Mirrors file along with EVERY other video put out by the “leadership” of Rippln.
These crooks wouldn’t know integrity if they sat and spun on it!
Whatever JB!
There was an article on SaltyDroid where he quoted the author of “Sociopath Next Door”… the surest sign of a sociopath is … do they play the pity card?
That “marine waitress not tipped because mistaken for lesbian” faker (it’s a hoax for pity) was one great example.
And there are people suspecting JB’s pulling something similar.
I tried to watch it for 3-4 minutes, but then I decided to “Fast Forward” through the rest of it. The video was designed for a different audience than me, e.g. the communication method was organized quite differently than what I was looking for.
One communication method can be “Tell people what you’re going to tell them, then tell them the actual content, then resume what you just have told them”. Other organized methods may work just as well, I only used that method as an example.
After 3-4 minutes, I didn’t even know WHAT I was waiting for or WHY I was watching the video. I simply wasn’t on the same wavelength.
Did he share some information about Rippln, something of importance? E.g. has he decided to quit, or made some other decisions?
It was his own version of it. I only watched 3-4 minutes, but his intentions was to tell something just as it was, “even if it made him feel vulnerable”.
And that’s where he missed me as an audience. I was looking for business information rather than a personal story. I was on a straight logical wavelength rather than an emotional one.
Integrity can be defined in many different ways, e.g. as “wholeness”, “honesty”, “fairness”, “being reasonable”, “doing the right thing”, and so on and so forth. We don’t know HIS definition of it.
Integrity is like general George S. Patton speaking about leadership = he probably know what it is, but he’s not able to explain what it is to others.
It’s maybe better to compare integrity to social intelligence.
Social intelligence = “the label we use to describe people who are relatively similar to ourselves”.
Integrity will then be “the label we use to describe people who share ethical values similar to our own”.
I watched the whole thing and Rippln was only mentioned indirectly at the end, when JB talks about exciting things in the “companies he’s working with”. That was it.
The video wasn’t really about Rippln, it was more directed to his personal following.
I’m not a member of either company but…
It’s either very stupid when they set up the name at the beginning or was done by design.
Either-way if they have a viable products or services and really signed up 1.4 million people they can work on getting a new trade name and domain names and use the 1.4 million people to get the word out. It’s a major blunder but not the end of it, if they can Monitize there business. Besides there are millions of people that join all kinds of business really checking them out. So this should not stop them.
So many so called business out there. I wish people would ask these two questions and get satisfactory answers to them.
1) How many people in this business make 100k a year or more, and out of how many?
(Logic if your joining a business to make money you should know how viable it is to do that for the time that you put it!)
2) How many active people with what volume of sales will generate 100k a year profit to you?
(Logic if your going to invest your time and money in a business that you do part time you should want to know how possible it is to get done and how viable it is to last long term before you start it’s the mean reason top leaders jump around its to hard to keep.)
If you can’t get real answer to these question that you can live with and believe you can do it, please do not start and keep looking. In my oppion no more the 50-100 people on your team is a very viable long term business.
Live strong, follow your dreams but don’t be fooled!
One of those “hey, quick, look over here,” smoke,mirrors, agra kadabra “Poof” maneuvers?
Rippln applied for a time-extension which was granted. New due date for Rippln’s reply is the 6th of Feb with a hearing now set for the 20th of Feb.
Michael Rutherford:
Rippln is dead! they stole our money…never paid out on the Apps people shared…They have a huge database of emails and mobile numbers which will probably by sold a million times!
FTC or whoever should move in now….
Actually Angel, that was written by Jonathan Budd, the sick self serving prose is a dead giveaway. It was originally send only to j Budd’s personal downline but got reposted elsewhere. After it had gotten out Rutherford stripped part of the greeting and the signature from it and has made no effort to dissuade people from thinking he wrote it.
One of the other downline leaders, and I’m saying leader with no irony, got in touch with Brian Underwood and confirms that without additional funding, Rippln will end. She, unlike Rutherford has been very realistic about these issues to her downline.
One key here is that this was in no way a Rippln public statement, this is two of the co founders reaching desperately for something to say when people ask why App Share “bounties” were not paid on the 15th as promised. Brian Underwood and Rippln corporate are still completely silent on this and every other issue.
So Budd wrote this?
Why on Earth can’t these people just put out straightforward statements on their company website?
Bloody hell, makes trying to report on Rippln a nightmare.
https://behindmlm.com/companies/rippln/rutherford-rippln-dead-in-the-water/
Yep, it was J Budd. I saw it first on one of the private facebook groups so can’t link to that but I reposted it with the original attribution over at RS:
realscam.com/f9/rippln-pyramid-scheme-mlm-fun-game-you-decide-2241/index8.html#post65191
It took me weeks before I could wade through one of their full “vision casting” webinars. It’s intentional, if you’re a detail orientated thinker looking for factual statements and coherent arguments they don’t want you. But if “speaking the vision into reality” sounds like a business plan to you then open your wallet real wide.
J Budd is already spamming away for his next project, I’m sure Underwood and Rutherford will have something new in the works just as soon as they can wash the stink of Rippln form their downlines.
According to some former Rippln members, most of the e-mails are fake. People used invites to generate fake registrations to get more invites, or some similar method. Some people had multiple “sub positions”.
When they signed up, they were given 5 invites. They could then use those 5 invites to register 5 fake registrations, to get a total of 25 or 30 invites. Some may have used those 25 fake registration invites to get additional 125 invites, before they started to focus on inviting real people.
That’s one of the reasons for why the 1.4 million signups only converted into 6,000 real members.
I think the real reason they have a whole hell of a lot of less than commercially useful email addresses was their original comp plan video.
Sure, they pulled it from their official YouTube page after a week or so but copies were made, subtitled into many languages and still exist today.
The specific promise was that for every five free “fans” you signed up, they’d pay you $20. There are a lot of places with internet access where $20 is a decent amount of cash. Enough to get people to create five (ten, twenty.,..) free email accounts to cash their “invites” in with.
I didn’t find the exact comment where statements like that were made, but I found something similar (link to another thread):
It’s one of the other reasons for why the 1.4 million only converted into 6,000 real members. People simply lost interest when it didn’t meet their initial expectations within reasonable time.
FLAWED VISION CASTING THEORY?
I seriously believe they should make some adjustments to their “Vision Casting” theories. A wise thing to do would be to use Rippln as an experience for “where did it fail and why did it fail?”, and apply some corrections to the basic theory.
Selfdev theories will typically fail when they’re applied to wrong types of ideas, e.g. if you don’t separate between things that CAN be affected and things that CANNOT be affected by a specific theory.
“Talk it into existence” will affect how you see it yourself and your own motivation. It may indirectly affect others and how they see it, for good and bad (some people simply didn’t believe in the visions), and potentially only for a short period of time before the vision will have lost its effect.
As far as I can see, “talk it into existence” will fail as a basic idea if we don’t combine it with something realistic. Important parts of Rippln’s visions were actually “out of reach” for the Vision Casting method. They tried to use visions to affect something they couldn’t affect (the Communicator App wasn’t affected by visions, or it was more affected by some technical factors).
As is the case with many / most of your hypotheses, they are based on the assumption those behind the various “opportunities” intend to be around for the long haul and are not simply out to make a quick few (million) bucks.
Peoples’ memories are short.
Anyone with the slightest sense of history can point out dozens of examples in recent history where the same names resurface time and time again in the MLM and HYIP ponzi “industries”
Considering the amount of money which has passed through the Rippln accounts since its’ inception, it would be easy to rake off a few million dollars and spend the next couple of years living a life of luxury planning the next “opportunity” to present to what will by then be a whole new set of victims who have never heard of “Rippln” much less know the story behind it.
I’m in the software/ app industry. I reported rippln, as a MLM /ponzi scheme to the SEC. I don’t know if they followed up. I also wrote CNN.
Article updated with Rippln’s second request for an extension. New dates if the motion is granted will be February 13th (reponse) and March 6th (hearing).
I’m guessing nobody from Rippln will bother showing up.
Article updated with news of a settlement between the parties and Standby Order of Dismissal filed on February 13th.
Well, they tried.
But there was more hype than reality.
Only 6,000 paid players.
I hope all 6,000 have stopped their 30 monthly auto debit.
I did months ago when I sensed something was not right.