Update regarding the CommunityBound/My Mountain Town Dispute

I will look at the contract when time permits, enjoy the distraction, and also appreciate your bringing the paragraph to my attention.

From what's been published, it seems "the devil is in the details" since SC evidently thought she had an "agreement in concept" with Community Bound -- while CG apparently believed they were just in the "talking about it" stages. It seems to be agreed that SC didn't tell CG in advance about the name change or the change in the URL (whatever that is, I gather it's an internet routing command) but did continue to maintain payments under the contract and otherwise adhere to its terms.

Brandon wrote:

frogger wrote: or.......you could read the documents YOURSELF and come to your own ignorant conclusion.

Fixed it for you!
When's the court date, SC? :pop

Brandon, Nothing ignorant about my conclusion. What is your experience reading, writing and negotiating contracts? Mine is 20+ years.

I'm glad the girls talked and sent each other emails. The issue is that the contract was never amended to reflect the potentially new terms. He said, she said

SC if this site doesn't compete with 285 then why did you pull over all of the post and users? Why do you have the same structure and naming conventions? Why do you have many of the same advertisers? Saying you are not competing and having a clone will be a hard argument to win.

I do wish you luck, because I never liked Robyn.

Unless I'm wrong, Pill, SC would say she intended this site to be a continuation of her 285Bound site as opposed to a new entity, and that's why she made the transfers.

ScienceChic wrote: Ahhh, towermonkey, you forget I posted earlier that transferring to a new website hosted elsewhere was approved by Robin, both verbally (3 hour phone conversation July 1, 2013) and via email (Jan 3, 2013 in which she stated I was free to create a new website, host it elsewhere, and remain a CB affiliate), and that I wrote a Letter of Intent July 4 stating that I would remain an affiliate and fulfill my obligations. Thank you CK for pointing out that it does not say "consent," just "notify." http://mymountaintown.com/forums/the-campfire/30237 and http://mymountaintown.com/forums/the-ri ... 8?start=90

As a paying CB affiliate, I am part of the network, I am not competing. I didn't make the 2 sites competing, Robin did by putting 285Bound back up live after removing my admin permissions on July 18 and blocking my access to all the 285Bound email accounts July 19, even though I paid money to license the url for a period of 3 years.

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles CK, I hope life gets better every day for you!

No, I'm not forgetting that. I do remember that and agree that there was consent - to something. I was just suggesting that a judge might see it differently because of the name change. It could easily be construed as competition even with the logo placement.

"Affiliate agrees not to participate in any business competitive to Communities Bound, or to move membership from any of its Bound Sites to a competitive website, for a period of one(1) year... "

I think the key words there are "from any of its Bound Sites". If you had done all of this and left the name 285bound, there would be no case.

I'm thinking that too: the problem was an implied dissociation from the CBound entity, suggested by the name change.

It's a little unclear from earlier dialogue in the thread, whether SC is adhering to all of the CBound contract criteria insofar as the CBound Evergreen entity is concerned. Meanwhile, I think I recall seeing the CBound owner advertising that same area for sale when it's already been claimed.

Sign me Confused.

As an interested observer only, there are millions of www sites....anyone can create one tonight, as a rule. The issue seems to be the cash flow associated with reputations and local small businesses.....simpleton I am even I get this........most of these efforts (including small businesses) are scrambling for $$$ during this Depression up here and most are seriously undercapitalized......sad but these times are not pleasant. Hope BOTH survive, but will not happen as long as the local Depression draws out....and out.....and out...and........seems probably only lawyers will get much out of this....

I'd be interested to know whether SC's payments to CBound were negotiated following the name change, and if so I'd certainly argue that the change had been accepted along with the payments.

The problem to any dispute is that there is rarely a clear and simple answer, rather it's a little like asking somebody to describe the view out their window: is it trees (yes)? sky (yes)? driveway (yes)? If these are inconsistent elements but all of them exist, the legal authority has to decide which of them predominates and yes, that is an expensive undertaking and one that costs a lot of frustration, worry, time and angst in addition to the financial expense. It's like taking a Princess Cruise with a flu victim: you can't get off the ride, and feel sicker after every mile. lol

I have to agree with SC on who decided to compete with who.
SC made it clear that that MyMountainTown was a continuation of 2B and made it clear she was a CB affiliate on the front page.
It was Robyn , who days later decided this was unacceptable and put 2B back up and in my opinion, attempted to impersonate SC with threatening pm's and the banning of members who disagreed with her position.
SC, as stated simply wanted a website name that more appropriately represented the community and helped to create more traffic with search words.

frogger wrote: I have to agree with SC on who decided to compete with who.
SC made it clear that that MyMountainTown was a continuation of 2B and made it clear she was a CB affiliate on the front page.

SC, as stated simply wanted a website name that more appropriately represented the community and helped to create more traffic with search words.

Then at the end of the term of the contract SC was going to hand the MyMountainTown website 100% back over to Robyn? Doubtful.

Well....there are a lot of scenarios that could have played out at the end of a contract.....I suppose.