The End of an Era...

gosh it's really weird making this video hello servos and welcome back to my youtube channel my name is felicia i'm originally from munich germany but i've been living here in cincinnati ohio since 2016. so as you can tell by the title this isn't a normal video like you're used to them on my channel this isn't about cultural differences between germany and the us but about me and my channel some of you guys probably already have an idea of what this is going to be about because you saw my posts in the youtube community tab and on instagram asking for your opinions on a new channel name starting tomorrow this channel won't be called german girl in america anymore but it'll be called philly from germany first of all thank you guys so much for sharing your thoughts and name suggestions with me feli from germany clearly won the vote in the end even though the majority of you said that they liked the current name the best and that no other name could even come close and many of you also asked why i would even want to change the name well the answer is i don't want to change it because i agree with you guys the name describes perfectly who i am and what this channel is about but unfortunately i don't have a choice here but let's back up a little bit so i started this youtube channel in early 2018 or if you look at the time that it was actually created you'll see that it says fall 2017 but then it took me a few more months to gather the courage to actually upload something so my first video was released in january 2018. there were a few different reasons as to why i started it for one i was on my second long-term stay in the us at the time and just found myself talking about cultural differences pretty much non-stop and i think my friends and family were kind of getting tired of listening to me i had also been watching numerous channels by americans living in germany during that time and i think even before i came to the us like wanted adventure by dana newman haley alexis or sam walton at the time i thought it was fascinating to hear how people from another country experienced and viewed german culture and germany as a country like what they found surprising what they liked and disliked and what they thought of certain habits of ours and when i came to the us people always ask me questions like what do germans think of us americans or what do you like the best about living here so far which made me think that americans would probably be interested in hearing about a foreigner's view of their country as well and another factor was that i kind of missed producing content because before i came to the us i had worked in the field of radio and tv during my undergrad and then suddenly i wasn't doing any editing or recording anymore in the us and i figured starting a youtube channel about my experiences in the us and the cultural differences would be a good way to kind of combine all of these things and since i knew that i didn't really want to make the channel about me as a person but mainly just about that one aspect that i'm a german living in the us i came up with the name i'm not going to say it again because after tomorrow i'm not going to be allowed to have any trace of the name on my channel and i don't want to get in trouble but i also don't want to have to censor this video afterwards but yeah i called it that because that's what i was a german girl living in the united states of america and that's what my channel was going to be about a while after i started my channel i found out that there was another person on the internet who had been using that same name for her blog i didn't really think much of it at the time though i mean she wasn't really active on youtube at all and our content was very different so i didn't really think it would ever be a problem and you know if it were to become a problem we'd just talk to each other well that's not what happened welcome to the us for those of you who don't know her the person who runs the drummergirlandamerica.com website and facebook page and everything that's affiliated with that is karen according to her blog she was born and raised in california to german parents so she's a first generation german american and shares a lot of content on german traditions german restaurants and festivals in the us traditional recipes german history german american culture and sells german american related products on her shop she's been using the name german girl in america since 2014 and registered it as a trademark last year in august 2020. now her and i weren't really in touch except that she forwarded me emails that were directed at me like once or twice but then last year in december 2020 i suddenly got a not so friendly sounding email from her brand manager and based on her social media posts also someone who's part of her personal life kevin saying that he wanted to talk about the brand issue so we got on a phone call and it was actually a friendly conversation where he explained his concerns about how the same name might confuse people i offered to clarify any possible misunderstandings to my viewers and also give their page a shout out i thought that we could both benefit from each other and work together since we were kind of in the same realm but targeting different audiences and providing a different type of content in different formats i was mainly active on youtube and she was mainly active on facebook and her blog i would say that her content is really mostly targeted at americans with german ancestry and people interested in german traditions and things that you'll find in the german-american communities here while i as someone who actually grew up in germany and just came to the us recently by myself talk more about my expat experiences and the cultural differences in regards to modern germany so i thought that those of my viewers that were kind of interested in those more traditional topics as well would find her content a great addition to mine and vice versa kevin agreed to that and that was the conclusion of the phone call he didn't ask me to stop using the name or mentioned anything along those lines we really just agreed to stay in touch i also mentioned to him that i was working on opening up a shop and asked what they thought of that but he didn't really have an answer so we just said that we would touch base when that was becoming more concrete so we hung up and i explained the situation in one of my videos in december and told people to check out their website i'm muting a few things because again i don't want to get in trouble then on a different note i've noticed that there has been some confusion lately with a website that isn't mine so i just want to make sure that you guys know that that's not my website and german girl in america gmail.com also is not my email address so just a heads up that's not me but karen who runs the website has some really cool content as well so check out her website and her facebook page she shares a lot about german traditions and recipes and she also sells some german products there so that was at the end of my new year's eve video from december 31st last year i don't think they gave me a shout out back but that's okay shortly after that i decided to get some legal advice on the matter to better understand what this all means and what options there were to work it out while talking about the situation with different professionals i got the advice to offer the other party to sell the trademark to me and then i would license it back to them for free meaning that they would make money because i'd obviously pay for it but they'd also at the same time be able to keep using the name as they did before and grow their pages now i don't want to show their emails without permission but i'll show you guys screenshots of my emails over here so i asked if they'd be interested in exploring the option of selling the trademark and i was being friendly and polite the whole time but i got a rather short response back that included kevin saying that the only way it would work is if i had an offer of six figures or more but that he doubts i have that kind of money i mean nothing wrong with not wanting to sell the trademark but i was a little surprised by the tone there so i asked him if he wanted to get on another phone call also because at the time i was working on the merge and wanted to discuss that as we had agreed on before this was in february of this year but i never got another response so i just assumed that they didn't really care that much after all and that things were fine and kept doing my thing including launching my store in june i didn't hear back from them until september 3rd so a little over a month ago when i suddenly received a cease and desist letter from their lawyer where i was asked to stop using the name and sign a document as you can probably imagine i was pretty surprised and dumbfounded that they just sent me this without ever getting in touch again and especially without ever just asking me to stop using the name they didn't ask me to do that once in a letter however it said that i had been contacted by karen personally last year and that she had respectfully asked me to cease use of the mark and that i apparently ignored that request and purposefully and knowingly decided to keep infringing now i don't know where this misunderstanding came from but not only have i never talked to karen about this topic it's only ever been kevin who was in touch with me but he also never asked me to stop using the name that's just a side note though fortunately i have an amazing attorney who is a renowned trademark lawyer at wood heron and evans here in cincinnati they're specialized in intellectual property law her name is lori kraft so a big shout out to her because she's been absolutely amazing throughout all of this but even with her help it's been extremely exhausting these past few weeks both physically and mentally because even though i agreed to change the name it turned out that it wasn't really possible to figure things out in a way that was reasonable for both sides one example is that unfortunately i wasn't given a reasonable race period for the rebranding process as it's common in these cases instead they only gave me about two weeks until october 15th the final settlement document wasn't even signed until this week though i signed it on monday and then they signed it yesterday and i have to have the rebranding finished by tomorrow so to say that it's been stressful to rebrand an entire business in such a short amount of time would be an understatement and the rebrand didn't just include that i changed my channel name and social media names going forward it also applied to all of my content from the past so my team and i have been going through all videos and have over 115 videos on this channel and blurt out the intros the outros and every mention on the name throughout the videos i know it's not necessarily as nice to watch anymore now but unfortunately youtube doesn't really give you a lot of editing options once a video is uploaded you can either blur parts of the video or make cuts you can't use both tools within the same video and you can add music from the youtube audio library that's it we worked with audio overlays a little bit too and if you take the video down and re-upload it all the comments and views would be gone obviously and any time related content wouldn't make sense anymore so that wasn't really an option either except that for a few of the videos i'm kind of thinking about re-uploading them but i'll get back to that at the end because i want to hear your opinions on it in addition to that we had to go through all the titles and descriptions of the videos as well as through countless posts on all of my social media accounts so yeah you can imagine how much work it's been and of course i also had to get the logo redone the intro animation and all of the branding everywhere while also still keeping this channel and the podcast running it's really been more of a 30 to 60 day job but we just worked through the weekend and you know 24 7 to comply with all of the demands so a big shout out to sarah ben and my brother timo for making this happen now in addition to the content i also have to get rid of all of the products that have the mark on it this is good news for you guys though because this means that you currently get 35 off all the beer mugs bottle openers and koozies there are about eight half liter beer mugs and two one liter beer max left right now so be quick because with all of this happening the shop will be going into a break tomorrow at noon so that i have time to just adjust all of the designs and order the new products and take new product pictures but it'll be back up in a few weeks hopefully so thirty five percent of beer max koozies and bottle openers and in addition to that ten percent off everything else now regarding my new name many of you suggested to just go with german girl in the us or ggia or muni girl in america or something like that but unfortunately i can't use any acronyms or names that are similar to the mark so those suggestions wouldn't have worked and yeah that made it pretty difficult to find a new name for me because being a german in america is what i am and what my channel is about but there really didn't seem to be a good name that conveyed that and that i was allowed to use and after thinking about it a lot and asking a lot of people it seemed like feely from germany was the best compromise because it wasn't too similar to the old name it's catchy enough and it's more personal too which i didn't really feel comfortable with that when i first started the channel but after thinking about it more i've decided that i'm okay with it now because i feel like we've all kind of grown this channel together over the last four years and you guys have gotten to know me as a person a little and you also know what my content is about so you know that feely from germany doesn't mean that i'm making any kind of lifestyle vlogs so faily from germany is the new name but my content will still be the same so no worries there except that i guess i'm gonna have to change my introduction phrase because i usually introduce myself as felicia but now that i have philly in the channel name i guess i'm just gonna have to go by philly from now on which philly is the german nickname of felicia in german and that's what all of my friends and family in germany have called me my whole life but i know that that's pretty hard to pronounce for english native speakers that's why i don't usually go by that name in the us but i guess this just gives you guys an opportunity to practice german pronunciation but no it's totally fine if you pronounce it however you can so probably philly from germany or something like that but the german pronunciation would be philly philly so the a sound is what's tricky but if you speak spanish or french it's the same a sound as in those languages fili but i felt like felicia from germany just didn't quite sound as nice so the rebranding is almost done we're still finishing it up and changing all the names tomorrow but i'd be lying if i said that it wasn't tough and sad for me to say goodbye to that name and the brand that i've built over the years because i mean it's obviously not like i tried to copy karen's brand and profit off her in any way we just happen to use the same name for our projects and even though i totally understand that she used the name first and i'm the one who has to change it it's still frustrating to me that things went the way they did i mean she knew about me for a while and she never said anything at all and even after they got in touch with me they were the ones who didn't respond anymore and just dropped it for seven months and then made me change everything in such a short amount of time i don't know what her reasoning for this was but i for one wish that we could have resolved this differently and maybe even work together and supported each other i personally also find it kind of frustrating that the name is even trademarkable to begin with i mean i totally understand that that's how the law works but in american trademark law they differentiate between descriptive marks like salty for a salt cracker which don't usually receive trademark registration and distinctive marks like codec for cameras for example and from my personal point of view i don't quite see how the channel name isn't descriptive the us trademark and patent office didn't find it to be descriptive since they approved it for a trademark but i mean it literally describes me and many other german girls that live in this country and yet i'm not allowed to call myself that now again i know that that's the law and i know that the reasoning behind the law is to protect consumers from getting confused by two similar marks but to an everyday person like me i feel like it would make more sense if something was either distinctive and therefore trademarkable but then anything that isn't the exact same wording isn't protected by that or it's descriptive and replaceable by similar wording but therefore not trademarkable i don't know if you guys know what i mean but to me as a non-law person the combination of saying yes it's distinctive and has a trademark but you still can't call yourself anything remotely similar it's just kind of hard for me to wrap my head around but i can't change that so we'll just make the best of the given situation now what does this mean for me for the channel and most importantly for you guys as i said starting tomorrow this channel will be renamed philly from germany and all of my social media platforms will be renamed as well all of your subscriptions and everything will stay the same though so you don't have to do anything all of my old videos will be altered through blurring and i apologize for that since i know it might make the viewing experience less fun but and this is the good news my content and everything else will stay the same regarding the shop you can get 35 percent off beer mugs bottle openers and koozies as well as 10 off everything else until tomorrow friday the 15th at noon eastern time because that's when we'll close the shop for a few weeks now moving forward i'm kind of playing with the idea of re-uploading some of my most popular videos from the past with the new branding so that there's a proper version of the video without any annoying edits in it in addition to publishing new videos of course so what do you guys think of that would you be annoyed by having some videos from the past pop up again or do you think it's a good idea let me know in the comments below because i'm really not sure about this one i'm also a little worried that the name change and all of this blurring in my old videos is going to be bad for the algorithm the almighty algorithm so if you guys want to support me in any way just make sure that you watch my next few videos even more than you guys already do maybe leave a thumbs up leave a comment share the videos activate the bell so you get notified about new uploads all of those things will be helpful to kind of get over this bump thank you guys so so much in advance i have an amazing community in general so even if you don't share the videos thank you so much for all of your support that you've given me in the last few years and continue to give me of course you can also join my patreon if you want to the link is in the info box below and will be updated tomorrow you can hit the super thanks button or buy me a drink on buymeacoffee.com lawyers fees and rebranding isn't exactly cheap but that's really just if you can and want to that was my announcement and a little background information for you guys i'll get back to blurring old videos now and i'll have a new video with the new branding app next week sometime for you guys so i hope i'll see you then cheers

Channel: Feli from Germany

Views: 733,450

Keywords: Germany, USA, America, Munich, Cincinnati, Cultural Differences, Culture Shock, Kulturelle Unterschiede, Feli, Felicia, Deutschland, München, Amerika, Kulturschock, Ohio, USA vs. Germany, Comparison, Expat, Living abroad, Move to Germany, Life in Germany, Move to Europe, Life in USA, U.S., Deutschland USA Kulturunterschiede, Unterschiede Deutschland Amerika, Karen Lodder, trademark usa, wood herron & evans, wood herron & evans llp, Lori Krafte, YouTube blurring

Id: s6Z8Jl9jjz0

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021