[mr_toad]

> I originally had my tagline as "The Free open-source [Company A] Alternative," which they claimed was illegally driving their traffic to my site.

In the UK it’s common for supermarkets to advertise “we price match Aldi”. (Aldi is the trademarked name of a low price supermarket chain). Maybe the US trademark law is different, but I’d be surprised if you can’t claim to be someone’s competitor.

It also occurs that even if their were laws in the US that said that you couldn’t advertise that you were a competitor of a trademark, they’d probably be unconstitutional.

[fluidcruft]

In the US generally it's "oh hey there do you wanna pay to play charades for a decade with our sadistic jackal lawyers who enjoy nothing less than finding ways to cause pain and bankrupt you so that if you somehow manage to survive financially long enough to prevail in court you will at best enjoy a pyrrhic victory while we shrug off the loss as a rounding error?"

[LoFtr1]

This isn't unique to the US. Germany is just as litigious, if not more so, and in general, unless you've inherited wealth or a business, you're barely getting by, so you're very quickly bankrupted.

[rovr138]

> Nominative fair use permits use of another’s trademark to refer to the trademark owner’s goods and services associated with the mark. Nominative fair use generally is permissible as long as: (1) the product or service in question is not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; (2) only so much of the mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service is used; and (3) use of the mark does not suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner.

https://www.inta.org/fact-sheets/fair-use-of-trademarks-inte...