You wrote:

Score one for Goliath, zip for David on this round ... nobody
other than a ridiculous bully is going to hassle a small businessman in
Anacortes, WA.

In the UK, there are far fewer cases of this nature, for one simple
reason: If I sue you and I lose, I pay my costs and your costs too.

Why don't we do this in the US? Because, of course, attorneys would
do less business handling frivolous cases; and so their lobby ensures
that things stay as they are.

My guess is that this case has more to do with Carver's lawyers than
Carver. A Carver attorney says to the big boss, "This brokerage
represents a potential threat to a Carver trademark." The big boss
doesn't know if that's true, and s/he only has one person to ask --
the attorney who just raised the issue. So to be on the safe side,
the attorney gets the go-ahead.

Most of the contracts I sign these days come about because one
attorney has sat down and thought carefully through all the unpleasant
things that another attorney could do to hurt me or the other party.
I've come to see that it's America's version of redistribution of
income. In the UK, they do it with modified socialism. In the US, we
do it by suing one another.

E.J. Bleendreeble
http://www.casualsailor.com