UK practitioners are being warned to take care when trading over the internet after a St Albans-based dispensing optician was threatened with legal action by a Californian company operating under a website with the same name.
Dispensing optician Robert Roope, who owns vintage eyewear website www.retrospecs.co.uk as well as the practice Roope Opticians in St Albans, has been threatened with legal action by lawyers representing www.retrospecs.com.
Roope launched www.retrospecs.co.uk in 1999 but he said he was unaware that the US-based site existed until six years later when lawyers threatened action.
The case went quiet until two months ago when Roope received fresh threats from lawyers ordering him to stop trading in the US and to pay a $5,000 fine.
Roope agreed to the conditions but after analysing a written document from the lawyers also requesting that he cease using YouTube and social networking sites Facebook and Twitter to promote his company as well as eliminating US customers from his database, he refused to sign it.
The US lawyers have since given Roope the ultimatum to either sell his company to the US firm or stop trading under the domain name www.retrospecs.co.uk completely or face costly legal action.
'I think it is very unfair for Retrospecs.com to take legal action against me when we have existed together on the internet for the past 11 years. I would even be happy to sell the company's products on my own website if they asked,' he said. Roope, who is seeking legal advice, estimated that earnings from his website make up 75 per cent of his total income and that some 57 other websites are currently linked to www.retrospecs.co.uk.
'A lot of practitioners need to be aware about the dangers of trading on the internet and my advice would be to consult lawyers first,' he added.
