What should I do if a trademark is registered in the USA with the name of our startup?

Question

Law in IT

In September 2018, two of my friends and I started a gaming services startup targeting the US and Europe.
We did not register a trademark and just worked on the product, everything went pretty well, but then problems with payments began and the site worked without payments in a half-dead state until today.

In July 2020, I will find out what is with the name of our site, or rather the logo, slogan and social. networks get to crunchbase with $800,000 in funding, and our name is trademarked in the US.

After some time, a person contacts us and says that he has registered a trademark and now we must give him the domain or he will sue us, and we will still owe him. He offered a four-figure sum to settle the issue by buying our domain.

The field in which we work is the same, they just stole the name and our idea, they just registered a trademark and therefore are in a winning position.
I also have a suspicion that these people used our site to present and deceive investors, but this may not be the case. Now they have cleaned up everything on the crunchbase and our site is not there, they are also throwing strikes everywhere and trying by all means to close all our social networks. networks, Facebook even succeeded.

How can you act in such a situation, agree to the money, or can you somehow pick up the trademark?

Answer 1

settle for money

This.

We have not registered a trade mark

SSZB. Now you will.

Answer 2

Agree with the maximum delay in the transfer time of the site and get paid.
It is urgent to register another trade mark, rename your product, actively rebrand the site with redirects to a new domain and warn the user.
Until you transfer the domain, actively promote your product under the new name, warning users that the current name is going to another product.

Answer 3

In your case, everything is quite complicated because it’s difficult, not hopeless, but difficult
1. The trademark is different for the trademark, there are a lot of points, for example, “confusion level”, etc.
2. There are a lot of subtleties and if I say a lot, then they are overdone.
3. You need to turn to specialists and it is in trademarks, moreover, with international practice, since international laws are not Russia, everything is different there.
And yes, there are a lot of black schemes for making payments, etc. I know firsthand since my wife has been working in this area for more than a year, then I have already heard enough stories (I advise on IT), there is a complete PPC.
In fact, many corporations are only engaged in wringing trademarks from others and reselling
In general, there is really such a big abyss that you yourself will not adequately climb there, there is nothing to do without a bottle and experience in this area, and the probability of a free consultation is zero, since each company has everything individually up to the type of activity (this also matters).
Even to stupidly recommend something to you, you need to spend several days studying the materials.
In general, there is only one answer.
You really need a paid consultation of a specialist who fumbles in this narrow spectrum
, this is exactly: A
lawyer working in the field of copyright protection. With international experience. With knowledge of English.
here ;)