or... maybe this is just a fun side project they whipped up as a joke? Some side project for a resume?
Just look at OP's comment history, one example:
> I absolutely love making chrome extensions - my very first one was creating an extension for tinder.com that would swipe left on anyone with the first name Chad
All they require here is your name and email, and the recipient's name and address. Both are (probably) public somewhere and in combination are almost certainly still worthless (or certainly worth less than the postage they're giving to you for free)
Why not just make a pdf or a copy paste version? I get suspicious when extra work is done to make worse ux; my assumption is that it rarely happens without a hidden incentive.
I'm not sure if they changed it after your comment, but right now there is clearly two options. One where you can get a google doc and just use theirs as a template, and one where they send it for you.
Yep. I definitely don't really like friends handing my residential address to third parties to mail me stuff without my consent. They can mail me stuff directly if they want though.
Like sending you gifts via Amazon? Or exposing your address when then send any mail at all? Your address is public record this seems like not something you need to concerned about.
No they are not. I don't know why you and people keep telling me this. You can try to look up my address and if you're doing it on the internet with some stupid private, non-governmental institutions and data brokers that collected data without my consent, you're likely to only find a bunch of addresses associated with my name that are NOT actually where I live.
I honestly feel a little creeped out when someone gives out my address to Amazon without my consent, even if it is to send me a gift. Even though Amazon already has my address, this feels different somehow and crosses a small boundary.
I don’t feel creeped out at all. Please send gifts. But if you think someone might feel weird, the name you use doesn’t need to be real. I send my stepmom things addressed as Nana. You can also use random dumb names like Birthday Boy Dave or Donkey Face Smith.
I feel the reverse, actually. Small businesses probably store personal info in a random Excel file on someone's USB drive and are much more likely to have a data leak that actual bad guys can get a hold of. Amazon is a big mega-corp but their database security is decent and random employees can't just access it for no reason, and doing so would likely leave a trail.
sure, name and address aren't worth much alone. but they get more valuable if you can associate other bits of information with them. surprising insights can be gained by joining a bunch of seemingly innocuous facts about a person. usually this just means they see more relevant ads, but occasionally it leads to being targeted for scams and other nasty things.
the tinfoil hat probably isn't warranted in this case, but as a general principle, I try to let my friends make their own decisions around privacy.
Also, I don't actually have a physical mailing addresses for people I would like to send something like this to, like maintainers for my favorite open source projects.
True, this service doesn't solve every one of humanity's problems. But even if you just get inspired to do something similar by email, or however else you can contact a maintainer, then it's had some success for you.
- a trademark may be claimed with TM even if not registered. A trademark registered with, and accepted by, USPTO should use circle R.
- these folks hold the copyright on their specific letter. Avoid infringement (and potential negative legal ramifications) by not reproducing their letter. This is not limited to photocopying a physical paper. Retyping verbatim will infringe.
- the concept itself cannot be protected with existing (US) intellectual property law.
To complete the legal analysis a bit more rigorously, mostly because I’m drunk and bored on Thanksgiving:
- The service name “continue and persist” is probably trademarkable by them if they wanted (assuming it’s not already in use). And as you point out, formal registration wouldn’t be necessary, although it does come with various benefits. Doing so could block someone from creating a similar service with the same or confusingly similar name.
- For copyright, reproduction doesn’t have to be verbatim to infringe. The standard is typically substantial similarity. So you couldn’t just change a few words here or there in the letter.
- Publicly disclosed concepts can be protected under US law, but you have to go through patent law. Haven’t done a prior art search, but seems unlikely that there’s much patentable here. There is also the section 101 (abstract idea) issue, but that is hard to evaluate without looking at the exact patent claims at issue.
> And it's so far from being patentable I hope I don't have to explain why.
I would say the same thing about a lot of things the USPTO has handed out patents for. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if someone could obtain a patent for this, if the patent application was written the right way. Whether such a patent would hold up in court is an entirely different question.
You all haven't trademarked the idea, have you? I think I'll just write a few of these up myself and send them out.