By
Svetlana Soroka
December 23rd, 2020
As part of the Safex legal response, a cease-and-desist letter was sent December 29, but Safeth’s website still uses the Safex brand in rather confusing ways.
A new blockchain e-commerce system is struggling to respond to a series of bizarre attacks from a little-known challenger. The Safex peer to peer e-commerce system made headlines last year with its Safex Token (SFT) and related ecosystem for decentralized transactions.
Now, in a court complaint filed just a few days ago on Jan. 18, the company claims that a party called Safeth LTD is using its logo and trademarks in malicious ways, and that this has caused significant business problems for the plaintiff.
Part of the legal complaint explains that after collaborative work, Joseph Lathus (identified as the head of Safeth LTD) asked to become a paid marketing consultant and was rejected by Safex. After that point, Safex alleges, Lathus and related parties at Safeth started to use company trademarks, and developed a platform based on a “Safex Platinum Token” that created all kinds of confusion and consternation about which company was which. Clearly, naming an equity a “Safex Platinum Token” when there is already a Safex ecosystem is abundantly confusing and probably wildly illegal.
Representatives for Safex further claim that the activity of Safeth LTD went “far beyond trolling” online, and into the area of extreme business infringement. Safex says its social media accounts were compromised, and goes into detail about how Safeth sent out communications comparing Safex to the illegal “silk road” marketplace of Ross Ulbricht, who is now incarcerated for his online piracy.
As part of the Safex legal response, a cease-and-desist letter was sent December 29, but Safeth’s website still uses the Safex brand in rather confusing ways.
“Borrow against collateralized reward-earning cryptocurrency that you can spend, save, or invest with,” reads a site directive under the headline: Pay Back Free Privacy Loans, itself rather incoherent. “Our signature ‘Pay Back Free Privacy Loans’ allow users to borrow up to 10x the value of their collateralized Safex Platinum Tokens in the form of Safeth Cash from our hot wallet known as the Treasury. … Vendors and Shoppers alike will also be rewarded for every purchase they make in both our wallet Decentralized marketplace as well as online at Safethmarket.com. Users will earn free Safeth Cash for engaging with our platform with gamification.”
Safex Business Impact
One of the types of fallout that Safex is showing resulted from this spurious use of enterprise trademarks is delisting from various exchanges.
Safex specifically cites pullout at CoinGecko, where it says the Safex token was delisted following some of Safeth’s activity. It’s not the first time that CoinGecko has delisted the Safex token, but plaintiff’s representatives are hoping the cause and effect is a clear example of how Safeth has distorted its corporate image online and elsewhere.
Safex also alleges that Safeth’s activity led to the Safex platform being labeled an “exit scam” and caused loss of business, along with the aforementioned delistings and other troublesome market changes.
As the court case makes its way through the courts, we’ll see more of exactly how this struggle took place, and what transpired as two companies wrestled over one set of brand names.
