Legal issues. The Maharishi Foundation demands that we display the following disclaimer: "Please be advised that the instruction provided you by our organization does not consist of the TM® or Transcendental Meditation® program... Should you wish to receive such TM® instruction, you must contact an authorized TM® center..." (please read the full text at the end of this page). September 2, 2005. We have received a letter from the attorney of the TM Organization, stating that we are infringing trademark law on the US registered marks Transcendental Meditation® and TM®. September 10, 2005. After a short email reply on September 6, we have sent a certified mail to the attorney of the TMO, stating that we are not infringing trademark law. September 20, 2005. The attorney of the TMO has sent us a new letter, again stating that we are infringing trademark law, and asking us to stop our activity within 7 business days. September 29, 2005. Sale of the Natural Stress Relief home-course is suspended. October 1, 2005. Sales restart for all countries but the USA. Even if the currency of our payment processor is US$, we cannot accept purchases from the USA. October 4, 2005. We have consulted with an attorney in the USA. He confirms that the TMO claims are legally baseless. US federal law allows us to sell our technique, under a different mark from TM®, and allows us to do comparison advertising, as long as the consumer is not confused about the product and its source. October 5, 2005. We have restarted the sale of the Natural Stress Relief home-course in the USA. November 4, 2005. The pseudo-legal harassment goes on. We have received a new letter from the attorney of the TM organization, containing baseless claims. Read more. November 9, 2005. To avoid any remote possibility of confusion, we have changed some text in our website: read more. There is no room at all for legal claims at this time: we are 100% legitimate. December 14, 2005. New letter from the attorney of the TM organization, containing the same old claims. We are 100% legitimate and we don't recognize any of those claims as valid. We are ready to face and to win any possible litigation. April 13, 2007. New letter from the attorney of the TM organization, containing new claims related to certain websites that are related to ours. As a courtesy, we are going to review the content of those websites and modify them so that they do not hurt the feelings of the MT Organization, of course preserving our right to use the trademarked terms according to US law. November 10, 2007. The harassment goes on: new letter from the attorney of the TM organization, containing the same old, baseless claims. We are 100% legitimate and ready to face and to win any possible litigation. July 30, 2009. The harassment goes on: new letter from the attorney of the TM organization (this time to NSR/USA only), containing the same old, baseless claims. We are 100% legitimate and ready to face and to win any possible litigation. We have a good faith belief that use of registered marks in our website and advertising is permissible under law. - Go back to the comparison page.

© 2003-2014 Istituto Scientia, Italy - Privacy Policy

Full text: the Maharishi Foundation demands that we display in our web materials the following disclaimer for 24 months, starting on September 20, 2005 (read more). "Please be advised that the instruction provided you by our organization does not consist of the TM® or Transcendental Meditation® program despite any past representations that may have been made to you to the contrary. Should you wish to receive such TM® program instruction, you must contact an authorized TM® program center. For information concerning such centers please see the website www.tm.org. Our organization is not affiliated with the sponsors of that website and we are not authorized to teach the TM® or Transcendental Meditation® program or any other programs founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. We are sorry for any confusion this may have caused you". We also like to report these words by Maharishi himself: "30 or 40 thousand teachers of TM I have trained, many of them have gone on their own, and they may not call it Maharishi's TM, but they are teaching it in some different name here and there... doesn't matter, as long as the man is getting something useful to make his life better, we are satisfied". (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Press Conference, May 14, 2003). Trademarks. Please notice what United States Patent and Trademark Office says: "Trademark rights may be used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services under a clearly different mark". In our case: not only the mark is different; not only ads and the web pages clearly show such difference; but our product (Manual + Audio) is even different from their Service Mark (registered in class 41, educational courses and seminaries!).