"Official Vagrant Records Site is down due to some legal issues, here's the direct cut and paste.
"we are temporarily taking down the vagrant records website for legal reasons. sorry for the inconvenience, it will return in the near future. in the meantime, go and buy the new SAVES THE DAY record "Stay What You Are". no, seriously…go and buy it. sincerely, Vagrant Records"
Hope to see the site up again soon."
Quite a few people have already sent this in, I just wish there was some sort of real explanation as to why it's being shut down.
Aubin here, for the record, I'm not sure how this got to the point where Vagrant had to take their website down. If this other label claims to have a trademark on "Vagrant," they'd have to have exercised legal means as SOON as they were aware of the other label. American trademark law is based on the fact that the owner of the trademark must be watchful for infringers, or the trademark can enter the common dialect. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me like the other Vagrant would have had to move on the larger Vagrant Records before now. They seem to have acted in bad faith, in waiting for the label to actually become big enough for the name to be worth something. I'm not saying anything about either companies, but it seems a little much to say "Oh, yeah, you're doing this bad thing. We knew about it before, but we were waiting till you had more money to milk you."
The thing is, they sat there, waiting for Vagrant to establish a strong brand name, and then jumped in with a trademark beef. It seems a little underhanded, but like I said, I'm going on the few facts we have.