Regator.com steals our brand - coincidence?

04 Jul

Posted by Justin Hartman in Afrigator, Projects, Regator, Things I Don't Like

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I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Regator.com went into private beta today and I picked it up via this Techcrunch article. They’ve also got great exposure on ReadWriteWeb and even Mashable.

These guys are a blog aggregator that not only use the Afrigator crocodile, similar domain name and colour scheme and I have to feel this is a little more than a coincidence.

There is little doubt that Mike, Stii, Mark and myself will need to speak to our legal team to find out what action we can take on this.

What do you guys think?

UPDATE: I’ve had a long chat with Scott from Regator and I’m now convinced it was a coincidence. Please see my updated post here.

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Ian 1 month ago 1 point
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Wow, that does look very familiar now doesn't it...

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Charl Norman 1 month ago 1 point
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Why didnt RRW bring it up and link to the Afrigator piece they did... in my opinion its a shocker.. same niche, same mascot, same colour scheme, similar name... jeeezus.

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http://www.charlnorman.com

justBcoz 1 month ago 1 point
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Yip, get legal advice asap. This is not cool!

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http://www.justbcoz.co.za/headspace

Wogan May 1 month ago 1 point
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No, that's way, way too close for comfort. I'd pursue with all due haste - things will probably be a lot tougher when they finally go out of Beta.

What makes this really fishy is that they registered the domain anonymously. There seems to be a mostly-authentic-looking MySpace page, but we all know how easily that could be faked.

Maybe it's just his unhealthy obsession with alligators? Lol...

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http://twittersa.co.za/

simonB 1 month ago 1 point
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Eish... although i do not agree with this, I doubt there is any legal action that can be taken. The best thing to do is contact them up and talk to them, try to win them over, if that doesnt work, just keep spreading the word, and many many people will refuse to support them.

I am sure some amicable agreement can be reached out of court.

Always go the friendly way first this is the web :-)

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http://www.simonb.co.za

justBcoz 1 month ago 1 point
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Please keep us posted on what develops here - this could be a very interesting case. I had to face something similar in the past but cyberlaw was a nonentity in this country back then. After that, I made sure to register all brands!

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http://www.justbcoz.co.za/headspace

Mario Olckers 1 month ago 1 point
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That's a nasty one, but don't think there's too much you'll be able to do here, and the fact that TechCrunch picked them up they'll be flying in no time, I tend to agree with Simone, you guys must now just use teh intarwebz and make as much noise as possible and cry foul everywhere so people can know what's going on

And anyways how much is lawyers gonna cost you to make an IP infringement case in an overseas jurisdiction...?

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http://marioolckers.com

Darren 1 month ago 1 point
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Hmmm, can you believe it. Seems a bit ridiculous, and although we can make a lot of noise locally, I think that the point needs to be brought to the attention of the international market in some big way.

Good luck with the lawyers, gents. It's worth the fight!

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http://out-think.blogspot.com

Yasser 1 month ago 1 point
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Sue them!!
don't even hesitate!

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http://www.genyasser.co.za

Shaun Dewberry 1 month ago 1 point
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I expressed my thoughts on this issue on Mike's blog, however I feel compelled to point out that we have no alligators in Africa. Or in Aus for that matter.

Alligators are native to the US and China.

I don't know if you have any recourse except to try be better than them.

When life gives you poop, make poop juice.

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http://www.dewberry.co.za

Scott Lockhart 1 month ago 1 point
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G'day Justin,

I am one of the co-founders of Regator.

We’re sorry you feel upset about this, but we had not even heard of afrigator until reading the comments everywhere. The reason we are called regator is because it a shortened form of agg-”regator” (that and the domain was available). It seemed to make sense. The alligator made an obvious mascot and they are green so we chose a palate to match.

I can honestly say that it is pure coincidence… and we are sorry if we have offended anyone, let alone you and the guys who are behind afrigator. It was not our intent.

p.s. as for the myspace page, it is real. Also, the domain is registered privately because we work at our home and we didn't want to have that everywhere. Nothing sinister, promise.

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http://www.regator.com

vincent 1 month ago 1 point
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This is such bollocks, I'm not concerned about their reproduction of the aggregation services, that is not a novelty; my biggest concern is that they've copied your imagery, mascot and perhaps the name. Intellectual property unless patented is unfortunately open to anyone, and you'd be very hard up trying to sue them for that which must be frustrating!

Aussies appear not to have moved on from being a colony of criminals :)

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http://www.moralfibre.co.za

Simon 1 month ago 1 point
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The developer of Regator, Scott, has posted to Techcrunch stating that it is just a coincidence and apologising for it. It's easy to see how this happened:

Both Afrigator and Regator derive their names from 'Aggregator'. The noun hiding in that word is 'gator' - as in, Alli-gator. It seems obvious to me that both brands have jumped on this. I doubt there is anything more to it than that.

There is no reason not to believe the Regator guys - who are being very nice about this, considering the allegations being made against them by everybody with a blog in SA.

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http://www.simon.co.za/

Justin Hartman 1 month ago 1 point
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@All - thanks for your support and passion to this post. I value every bit of it you've given us, it's been an eye opener for me.

@Simon - I'm inclined to agree with you and I have personally sent Scott an email earlier. I see Scott has commented on this post and I'm hopeful we can chat about this and other stuff soon.

I do think however that we need to reserve judgement on the matter until we've actually seen regator live. Maybe Scott will give me beta access so I can make up my mind finally.

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1 /people/afrigator/ /people/afrigator/following/ http://justinhartman.com