Email news service Mercury Mail said Tuesday that it changed its name to Infobeat. The name change is in response to a trademark-infringement lawsuit filed last year by the San Jose Mercury News.
Mercury Mail "finally realized we were serious," said Bob Ryan, director of Mercury Center, the Mercury News online product. The newspaper and its parent, Knight-Ridder, filed the suit in November after several months of trying to cajole the company into changing its name. "Our customers were extremely confused," Ryan said. "They thought we ran Mercury Mail and vice versa."
Not only customers were confused. On the day before the newspaper filed its suit, FTD, the flower-delivery outfit that uses the Roman god Mercury as its symbol, tried to sue Mercury Mail. But by mistake it named the Mercury News as the owner of Mercury Mail, and, says Ryan, even served papers at the publication's headquarters.
"That was great for us," Ryan said, because it proved that Mercury Mail was causing confusion in the marketplace - a major threshold issue in trademark cases.
Infobeat, working with media partners such as Ziff-Davis, Tribune Media Services, and the Weather Channel, sends customizable email news and information to 1.4 million subscribers. The free service is supported by advertising revenue.
John Funk, the company's founder and chairman, wouldn't comment on the settlement but said the name change is "because 'Mercury Mail' went over a lot of people's heads," he said. "It's because, on the Internet, the name of the game is branding."
Funk said his company spent "several months trying to find a new name. After presenting focus groups with 550 names, working with consultants, and spending "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, the company settled on Infobeat because "it's easy to remember, it's descriptive of what we do, and it's fun," Funk said.
