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Imagine the pride of watching your 12 year old daughter invent a product and then turn it into an exciting startup business; watching as she finds the excitement and joy that comes with being creative, taking initiative, and watching as all her hard work leads to success. It's the type of entrepreneurship and experience we would be excited for if it happened to anybody in your family, let alone two kids. But a year and half later instead of continued encouragement and reward, a company with a similar name is sueing my daughter. They are not just asking us to change the name, but demanding to shut down the business completely and pay them a million dollars. We are asking you to stand with my daughter and demand Susan Haypak and Current Technologies to drop their lawsuit.
Back in the summer of 2012 my daughter Sophia came up with a solution and accessory to keep her cell phone clean. She took a microfiber cloth and double-sided adhesive tape and stuck it to her cell phone and when she wanted to clean her screen she would peel it off and wipe her screen. After months of testing and reworking the product to make it work flawlessly we then named the product Hype Wipes® and made a bunch of cool designs and since turned it into a company. Hype Wipes® are a cool sticker accessory that can stick to pretty much any surface in addition to acting as a screen cleaner for cell phones and most devices. Kids and adults loved them.
After a year and a half in business Sophia and Marissa received an email from a Company called Current Technologies, a company that deals mostly with hospital cleaning supplies, telling them to shut down their business because the name Hype Wipes® was infringing on Current Technologies trademark Hype-Wipe®. If they didn't comply with all of Hapak’s demands they would be sued for trademark infringement. This claim was made despite the fact we filed for our own trademark and were granted the Hype Wipes® mark by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
This would be hard for any adult to deal with, but this involved children who were seeing a very different side of the business world. Current Technologies soon went and filed a federal lawsuit asking for one million dollars in damages. In the NYC area a retainer for a trademark litigation usually runs $100 to $500k. The cost to litigate is in the millions. We are a family business with no budget for an expensive lawsuit.
They then sent a copy of the lawsuit to everyone of our distributors listed on the website, telling them not to do business with Hype Wipes® or face a potential lawsuit as well. They didn't stop there. Then Current Technologies sent the same letter and a copy of the lawsuit to each of the girl’s schools threatening if the schools used Hype Wipes® as a fundraiser they would include them in the lawsuit.
Enough was enough, and we didn't want to put the girls through anymore. The lawsuit would cost more than they had made and the experience had become a nightmare. In an effort to avoid a costly yet frivolous lawsuit and move on, we agreed to the majority of Current Technologies demands: we would abandon the trademark we paid for, stop selling under the Hype Wipes® brand, and even take down the hypewipes.com domain name which we have owned for over 2 years. But those concessions were not enough for them to drop the lawsuit.
This is not the lesson I want to teach my children about business in America. Our country was built on small startups. What does it say that a company would go after two young girls, uncompromising and out to destroy what they created, over a name nobody is confused over. We have to stop big businesses from going after smaller, new upstarts out of greed. If this can happen to my daughter, it can happen to any new company. We take a stand now.
With your support we can tell Susan Hapak and Current Technologies to drop the lawsuit now. Please sign our petition and share with friends and family today.
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/troubleshooters/Hype-Fight-Young-Inventors-Sued-for-1-Million-281869061.html
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