Sor­ted! Joel is happy, I’m done with the hassle, and I actu­ally got round to releas­ing those bug fixes!

I got a reply from Joel. It looks like he will be spend­ing more money on his attor­ney. Ah well.
I really haven’t got any­thing inves­ted in the name of the thing. In fact it never was inten­ded to be a name, it’s more of a descrip­tion! So what the heck, it’s now called B2Links!

Edit: I’ve now sent my reply to Joel.

It was good while it las­ted, Wired has this story Gib­son Kicks the Blog­ging Habit

“DUBLIN, Ire­land — Writer Wil­liam Gib­son will wind up his hugely pop­u­lar web­log within a few weeks, out of fears that it might stifle his cre­at­ive think­ing about his next novel.
“I think it’s in its last couple of weeks,” he said. “I do know from doing it that it’s not some­thing I can do when I’m actu­ally work­ing. Some­how the eco­logy of writ­ing nov­els wouldn’t be able to exist if I’m in daily con­tact. The watched pot never boils,” he added with a laugh. ”

I must admit I didn’t read it as reg­u­larly as I would have liked, but it was always interesting.

I have now sent my response.

Today I received an email from Joel Lesser at Cre­at­ive NetVen­tures, Inc, con­tain­ing a Cease and Desist Notice from LinksManager.com, refer­ring to my B2 Link Man­ager. The email says

“it has come to our atten­tion that your unau­thor­ized use of the trade­marked name LINK MANAGER on your site (http://zed1.com/b2links/) is too sim­ilar to our trade­marked name LINKSMANAGER”

The email provides a link to the US Pat­ent and Trade­mark Office Trade­mark Applic­a­tions and Regis­tra­tions Retrieval ser­vice. Wherein you can find details of their registered trade­mark which is LINKSMANAGER. A search on the Trade­mark Elec­tronic Search Sys­tem (TESS) turns up Asyst Tech­no­lo­gies, Inc. who own the trade­marked name LINK MANAGER, described as “Com­puter hard­ware, namely, serial com­mu­nic­a­tions port mul­ti­plexes”.
Now my little B2 add-on describes itself as “B2 Link Man­ager” six times on the B2 Link Man­ager page which Joel ref­er­ences. There are also eight but­tons on the page which very spe­cific­ally describe it as “B2 Link Man­ager”, and in the provided HTML I use both Title and Alt tags with the text “B2 Link Man­ager”.
The email also says

“Because your product man­ages data in a sim­ilar way to how Links­Man­ager man­ages data”

Well lets just look at that for a minute: From their home page we get:

LinksManager Features
 * No software to download or install
 * Fast, easy setup, or get a free setup from LinksManager support
 * Import your current links pages - no retyping or recoding necessary
 * Full cosmetic control to seamlessly blend your links pages with
   the rest of your website
 * Quickly add, edit, and delete links from your website - no coding or
   FTP necessary
 * Pages can live on our server, or your server
 * Automated Top Link Lists showcase your most popular links
 * Automated email notifications for every step in the link exchange
   process
 * Reciprocal link checker searches the net to verify that your link
   or banner exists on all websites listed on your links pages
 * Dead link checker identifies and flags dead links listed on your
   links pages
 * Auto link rotator rotates your links nightly to insure equal coverage
   for all of the links on your site
 * Highlight new links with special graphic identifiers
 * Special automation features use LinkPartners.com to find link swap
   partners fast and easy
 * And much more!  Click here for a full feature list 

None of these apply to B2 Link Man­ager!
If we look at their code of eth­ics page which describes the “Links­man­ager concept” thus:

LinksManager was designed to automate the following tasks:
 * Manage link categories, including add, modify, and delete
 * Manage links, including add, modify, and delete
 * Rotate links pages alphabetically
 * Check for dead links
 * Check for link reciprocation on other websites
 * Send courtesy emails between webmasters swapping links
 * Search links
 * Import links site name, URL, and description only (LinksManager
   does not import email addresses)
 * Upload links pages automatically the account owner's server
 * Perform visual cosmetic changes to the account owner's links pages
 * Create Top Links Lists to display the most popular links 

Now, B2 Link Man­ager can do the first two; but none of the oth­ers. So I’m a little puzzled as to how “your product man­ages data in a sim­ilar way to how Links­Man­ager man­ages data”.
Maybe Joel has mis­taken me for one of these people.

Just spot­ted this story: J K Rowl­ing richer than Queen.

“Boy wiz­ard Harry Pot­ter has made author J K Rowl­ing richer than the Queen, accord­ing to The Sunday Times Rich List.
The 37-year-old has more than quad­rupled her per­sonal for­tune in the past two years.
Her £280m makes her the wealth­i­est woman in show­busi­ness and Britain’s 122^nd richest per­son — 11 places higher than the Queen. ”

That’s an awful lot of money!