What to do if another Crafty Business has the same name? I believe mine was 1st!

[gypsysoul3]

Please forgive me if this topic has been covered....i actually have been absent from Craftster for awhile (my life got really bust recently). I've done a bunch of searches but can't seem to find what I'm looking for.

Anyway, my question is, what do I do about a company that has the same store name that I do and I believe I was using the name first. My store name is not officially trademarked, but I believe/thought if you could prove you'd been using something like a name/logo publicly that you could claim it as being yours. (Does that make sense?)

I know when I began using my shop's name a number of years ago, that there was no other crafty store online with that name (I researched it to no end), and now there is. I researched how long the site with the same name as mine (http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp) has been in business and it seems it only began about 9 months ago. (Had they Googled the name they would have come upon heaps of hits for my store).

The other issue is that my shop name is PinkBird Creations, where PinkBird is one word, this other company is Pink Bird Creations, where Pink Bird is 2 words. Does that matter? Also, I am in the US, and it appears this shop is in the UK.

Now, do I send them a cease and desist? Do I kindly email and explain that I had the name first and recommend that they change theirs so that our customers aren't confused? (I really don't want to tell people the name of my shop and have them go to that site accidentally--b/c even though we both make crafty things, they are quite different, and vice versa, I'm sure).

Any suggestions or advice would be fantastic!
Thanks, Create a great day!

[CraftyChef]

Well, there are lots of other "pink bird" this and that listed on Etsy and on Google, so I'm not sure why you targeted this particular business; that's what happens when your name consists of common words that a lot of people like because the things themselves are trendy (there are 60 pages of Etsians using the word "pink" in their name! Just a matter of time before "bird" got into the mix). Fact remains, though, that if you want to attempt to tackle someone in the UK - and I'm guessing there's no trademark registration on either side - what will you do if they refuse? You have to plan for that scenario.

[gypsysoul3]

i understand that there are lots of "pink" whatevers and pink bird's out there and on etsy...i think my concern was that this shop of crafty goodness has the same name as me. PinkBird Creations (just with a space in between pink and bird). There are other similarities as well, such as blog names, etc.

My concern is really, customer confusion. if someone googles one of our shop's names the other's appears (and same for the blog). While I don't think this person did it intentionally, or perhaps years ago they saw my site and it subconsciously stuck in their head, whatever.

I guess my question was more about Common Law Trademarks since I was most likely using the name first could I simply request her to change it to something else, by dropping/changing the "creations" part. I was also interested to see if anyone else had something like this happen and what did they do.