#301604 - Copyright Infringement on www.cruciallearning.org
We are intellectual property counsel for VitalSmarts, LC. (“VitalSmarts”). We write regarding your willful and flagrant infringement of VitalSmarts’ trademarks, unlawful impersonation of VitalSmarts on the website cruciallearning.org and in social media, and false advertising.
As you well know, VitalSmarts is a leader in the development and provision of executive and leadership training. Since 1989, VitalSmarts has provided corporate training and organizational performance services. Specifically, VitalSmarts focuses on teaching skills for creating alignments and agreements in the corporate sector, and offers online training in addition to on-site consulting and team development 
services. VitalSmarts’ core programming is based on New York Times bestselling books, including Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, Getting Things Done, and The Power of Habit, and has developed corresponding programming that is appropriately named.
Throughout its twenty-two years of training corporate professionals, VitalSmarts has been recognized as an “innovator in corporate training and organizational performance,” and has accordingly developed substantial goodwill in the VITALSMARTS® mark as well as its family of CRUCIAL marks, including CRUCIALTM, CRUCIAL LEARNINGTM, and CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS®, among others. Copies of pertinent registrations 
and application details from the official records of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office are attached to this correspondence as Exhibit A (the “VitalSmarts Marks”).
VitalSmarts was very concerned to learn that you have registered and are using the domain name cruciallearning.org, which fully incorporates VitalSmarts’ CRUCIAL LEARNINGTM mark and is confusingly similar to VitalSmarts’ current domain name, cruciallearning.com. Furthermore, you are purporting to be VitalSmarts through your use of the VITALSMARTS and CRUCIAL LEARNING marks on the website associated with 
cruciallearning.org. See Exhibit B. In fact, you refer to yourself as 
VitalSmarts was very concerned to learn that you have registered and are using the domain name cruciallearning.org, which fully incorporates VitalSmarts’ CRUCIAL LEARNINGTM mark and is confusingly similar to VitalSmarts’ current domain name, cruciallearning.com. Furthermore, you are purporting to be VitalSmarts through your use of the VITALSMARTS and CRUCIAL LEARNING marks on the website associated with 
cruciallearning.org. See Exhibit B. In fact, you refer to yourself as VitalSmarts, through the inclusion of the following statements on your website: “vital smarts, world acclaimed author of crucial chatting series, presents...” and “vital smarts is the original crucial learning conversatiopn and also the best. navigate today's dangerous business and personal world with your vital smarts all the while 
crucial learning new skills and tasks.” Id. (misspelling in the original text). Clearly, you are attempting to siphon Internet traffic intended for VitalSmarts and mislead consumers into believing that your website is the official VitalSmarts website. The resulting consumer confusion is the essence of trademark infringement in violation of the federal Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1114, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a).
This confusion is exacerbated by your use of VitalSmarts’ social media handles. On Twitter, Instagram, and OnlyFans, you have adopted the @VitalSmarts social media accounts and are holding yourself out as VitalSmarts. In fact, you are using VitalSmarts federally registered logo (see U.S. Trademark Reg. No. 3219386, attached hereto as Exhibit C), as your profile image. Moreover, your Instagram account falsely 
claims to be VitalSmarts (“The VitalSmarts Crucial Learning Instagram! Learn to be a leader!”), your Twitter page holds itself out as the official VitalSmarts Twitter page through the inclusion of the VITALSMARTS and CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS marks, and your OnlyFans account falsely indicates You are based in Provo, UT, the location of VitalSmarts’ headquarters. See Exhibit D. Such content necessarily 
increases the likelihood that consumers will mistakenly assume you are VitalSmarts and therefore, damages the goodwill in the VitalSmarts Marks. See JLM Couture, Inc. v. Gutman, No. 20 CV 10575-LTS-SLC, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40953, at *63 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 4, 2021) (“The use of an identical mark on an [social media] Account where consumers had previously seen Plaintiff's goods … increases the likelihood of 
confusion as to affiliation.”).
Your social media accounts also feature material wholly unrelated to leadership training. For instance, Your Twitter feed consists of photographs of birds with captions in Japanese. Such material necessarily harms VitalSmarts’ reputation, as it is inconsistent with the well-curated materials published by VitalSmarts on its website and social media, and therefore, weakens VitalSmarts’ professional public 
image.
Furthermore, the cruciallearning.org website features a “warning” falsely stating that our client’s website is not the true VitalSmarts website, when in fact, the opposite is true: “WARNING WARNING WARNING: do NOT use the services from https://cruciallearning.com ! It is not the vitalsmart you need.” This statement is a “false … representation of fact, which … is likely to cause confusion, or 
to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association” of your website with VitalSmarts, and, therefore, constitutes false advertising pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(1)(A). You also further defame our client and the VITALSMARTS brand with untrue statements such as “This site is a monument to "VitalSmarts LC"'s claim that the NASA engineers were to blame for the Challenger 
disaster; it was in fact management that sent people to die. The rest of what they write is junk too.” Exhibit E.
In light of the above, VitalSmarts demands that you immediately:
(1) cease and desist from any and all use of the VitalSmarts Marks or any designation confusingly similar thereto;
(2) cease and desist from any and all use of the domain name cruciallearning.org or any other domain name confusingly similar to the VitalSmarts Marks;
(3) cease and desist from any and all use of the @vitalsmarts social media handles including but not limited to profiles on Instagram, Twitter, and OnlyFans, and any other social media handle confusingly similar to the VitalSmarts Marks;
(4) cease and desist from holding yourself out to be VitalSmarts, or otherwise affiliated with our client;
(5) transfer the @vitalsmarts social media handles to VitalSmarts; and
(6) transfer the domain name cruciallearning.org to VitalSmarts by following the instructions set forth by your registrar, including “unlocking” the domain name and providing the undersigned with the trasfer authorization code.
If you do not provide written confirmation by November 8, 2021, that you will comply with our client’s demands, VitalSmarts may pursue all available remedies, including injunctive relief, without further notice.
The foregoing is without prejudice to our client’s rights and nothing contained herein shall be deemed a waiver of any such rights, all of which are expressly reserved.
lease email michaelsm@ballardspahr.com for a full copy of the above letter with the aforementioned exhibits.