| April 5, 2002
Bill Donabedian Dear Mr. Donabedian, It has recently come to our attention that you are using the names "Mid By Midwest" and "MXMW", the corporate name "MXMW Cincinnati, LLC" and the Internet domain name "mxmw.com" in connection with your music festival. Please consider this to be notice that you are in violation of state and federal trademark and unfair competition law due to your unlawful use of those names. In addition to its SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST and SXSW marks, SXSW, Inc. owns and has federally registered the marks NORTH BY NORTHWEST and NXNW. Your "Mid By Midwest" and "MXMW" names appear to be intentional imitations of our marks, and are used in connection with a festival similar to our SXSW and NXNW events. As a trademark owner, we have an obligation to protect the goodwill and reputation associated with those marks by preventing the unauthorized use of confusingly similar marks. We strongly believe that members of the public who see your mark will assume that we have at least approved or sponsored your event. Therefore, we must demand that you change your corporate name, your domain name, and the name of the event immediately. Please send us written notification of your choice of new names within 10 days. If you choose to continue to appropriate our trademarks, we will have no choice but to turn this matter over to our representatives, the law firm of Fulbright and Jaworski. Sincerely, |