Oh and I forgot to add – I love the Copyright at the bottom of each page of the site in question!

I agree with both Mike and Alan. Of course, any request, polite or otherwise, to use our brand name as if it were their’s would have met with refusal. There is no ‘grey’ area here at all in my view.

Definition of ‘passing off’: “The law of passing off is a tort that seeks to protect victims where an individual or company claims to produce goods or offer services as somebody else…in such a manner that deceives the consumer into believing that they are purchasing the goods or services of that individual or company that they trust and recognise.” (Source: Brand Protect LLP, http://www.bptm.co.uk).

The adverse implications for the victim of passing off can be all or some of: adverse effect on reputation, brand confusion amongst customers and suppliers, loss of trade and profits, and wasted time.

Hi Miles,
Well I do seem to have stirred up a bit of a hornets nest haven’t I!
I should have guessed this would happen with one of the smaller Islands no disrespect but if you “break wind” on one end of the island, the other end knows about it before the day is out! ( long term residents will know what I mean! ) as you are obviously very protective of the network of sites you have built up to cover all the angles in Lanzarote.
Before I continue, don’t worry just give me a few hours to delete the content and I am sure you will all be happy again!
No future content will be willingly published you have my word, and if by any chance it is I am sure you will let me know!
As far as rushing off to Google I feel that was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction and that was not necessary, nor was publishing the who-is info ( you yourself protect your personal info, on many of your sites ) you should have allowed me to sort this out behind the scenes as I feel I have and am responding quickly to your concerns.
My e-mail by the way is support@all-things-lanzarote.com should anyone have any other problems.
I am not a “thief” nor am I a scum bag,lowlife etc ( believe it or not I am quite a nice bloke according to people who know me! ) my “original” plan was merely to publish a small snippet with a read more…linking to the original article and web site ( much in the way yahoo does on their homepage )and no offence was intended to anyone, I genuinely believed people would be happy to receive links to their respective blogs and web sites as a result, and it was not necessary to get personal.
Anyway as I have said I will start to deal with it now.
You have archived a lot in the couple of years you have lived on the Island and I am sure that having lived here in the Canaries for the last 20 + years I have a wealth of experience to draw on myself, I will go back to the drawing board and approach it from a different angle!
I am not an imposter as I said in my reply and I genuinely had no idea Miles had his site ( I am more than happy to make a reference to this on the site giving a link to him, but that is of course up to Miles )
I would appreciate you posting this reply seeing as you have taken so much trouble to broadcast your views, at least allowing me a chance to publicly reply and give my side of events.
Hopefully we can put this to bed and all get on with our lives, agreed?
Kind Regards,
Paul

Miles,
Now this is getting a little silly to say the least!
If you or anyone cares to try the e-mail address I have provided you will see that it works, I was simply getting on with deleting all of the posts as agreed, for God’s sake give me a chance!
Incidentally it amounted to about 9 or 10 small snippets that all directed to Alan’s site with clear links to all, absolutely no posts that were made had any reference to your site at all, the only reference to you was on a comment thread you made which when clicked on, took people to your site.
My site in no way emulates your style at all, yours is full of advertising hotels car hire etc etc and I do not and will not start charging people 45 to 245 euros per month for the privilege.
I believe this has simply got your back up because of the similar name which I have explained before, to start talking solicitors and “brand” names is just ridiculous ( if someone decides to buy allthingslanzarote.net or org which they can do without “asking your permission” )what are you going to do? throw another hissy fit! you do not own Lanzarote ( sorry to be blunt ) but starting to threaten me with solicitors etc has now got my back up in a big way my friend.
I am quite legally entitled to have the name that I have and have no intention of taking it down.
I have taken action straight away to resolve this problem, and I think Alan seems to be a reasonable man and can see what I am trying to explain.
I often leave the “comments” on a post as the replies usually include another point of view or another link to more information such as what has happened in your case.
One last thing, I will make a reference to this correspondence on my site and include a screen shot showing the type of thing that has caused such an upset,I still believe I have been misunderstood in my intentions perhaps other people without an agenda would care to see what I mean.
Miles, save your legal money and give it to the local dog charity or something worthwhile, now that would be worth writing about.
There is a huge difference between making a short reference to someone’s post and making clear references and links to that persons web site or blog ( as you will see from the screen shot )rather than copying and posting a full article from someone passing it off as their own, which I have never done or will do.
I will post this to my site, leave it up a couple of days and then be done with it, as to be honest I don’t need the stress ( I suggest you do the same )
Regards,
Paul

Paul,
Here’s my olive branch to you..I might have come up with a solution that will work for both of us.

I own two other domain names that I have not done anything with yet: totallylanzarote.co.uk and lanzarote-now.com. I will donate one of these for you to use as your site, on the understanding that you remove all content from your existing site, and close it down. I will also reimburse you a reasonable/competitive rate for the cost of registering your existing site name.

It seems to me that you don’t lose on this: you keep all of the content you’ve built, transfer it, and simply change the name references on the new site. I assume that you have not yet spent money promoting your site, wheras I have spent a considerable amount in the past year.

How does that sound to you? I will keep any further action in my back pocket for now until I get your response.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Paul
I am more than happy to have this dialogue with you directly, as I’ve stated before. You can use my email address that you already have, or the contact form at http://www.allthingslanzarote.com/pages/Contact-Us.html – both will find me.

I hope very much that we can settle this amicably, and as I said in my first post to your site, I do understand that you may not have originally realised that my site was already in existence. I have suggested a way out of the difficulty that hopefully works for both of us, and I look forward to hearing from you directly about it.

Then I suggest you remove this page that is accusing somebody and sabotaging their website if your just going to post comments you find appropriate or I will simply post the same comment on various other websites.

Well this looks like we will all reach a happy conclusion soon, have just spoken with Alan who is a very reasonable guy and we are sorted.
In the process of speaking to Miles now to accept his olive branch to stop the conflict of interest regarding the same site names and suggest that rather than reimburse me he make a donation to a dog refuge on the Island of Lanzarote thus giving something back to the community and achiving something positive from this whole misunderstanding.
Hopefully this will be resolved very shortly.