this story featured in last week's Guardian as thus (tells you most of what you need to know):

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/07/guardiansocietysupplement

"Toby Evans and friends organise a small community arts festival in Slough, and because some of them are ecologically minded they planned this year to include a "freecycle" event, where people bring along unwanted things and swap them to avoid waste and landfill. As Evans says: "We thought it might be nice to promote the Freecycle cause - chat, no money changing hands, cup of tea, like minds, all very harmless." But after they contacted the local Freecycle group, the organisation they believed was radical and community-spirited revealed itself as a legally avid American corporation, and refused to allow them to use Freecycle's name or logo. They were told: "I'd hate to have to ask our lawyers to intervene. . . If I don't hear from you by midnight I will be forced to report this to our lawyers for action." Yes, unbeknown to most of the million Brits who use Freecycle, it accepts money from America's biggest waste company and has purged itself of hundreds of groups that don't play by its rules. Evans has duly written back: "We are changing the name as requested - to the 'Not the Freecycle night: bring and take event'.""


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we had contacted the local Freecycle group in advance, not to ask for permission (because as it's clearly local people, including ourselves, voluntarily arranging to swap things amongst ourselves on a yahoo group, so it never occured to us that we needed to ), but to let the local people know we were running the event. We never heard anything back until the morning of the event:

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Freecycle UK
Date: Nov 1, 2007 11:53 PM
Subject: Fennerfest and Freecycle
To:  slough4peace@yahoo.co.uk
Cc: South East


Dear Fennerfest organisers

Your festival, and the Freecycle event at it, have come to our
attention. It looks a really great festival. We unfortunately have some
concerns about the Freecycle event you are holding. We have no record of
permission being granted for this to be an official Freecycle event and
therefore you are not allowed to use our name or our logo for the event.
As you will see below, Freecycle and the Freecycle logo are trademarks
of The Freecycle Network and thus any use of the terms and logos for
events such as what you are advertising needs to be licensed. Perhaps
you could re-title the event a give and take event.

Sorry for being the bearer of bad news about this!!

Do you have any contact with the local Freecycle groups? If you were to
work with them there may be ways around this.

I'd hate to have to ask our lawyers to intervene therefore it would be
appreciated if you can sort this matter as soon as possible. If I don't
hear from you by midnight on Friday, I will be forced to report this to
our lawyers for action.

Many thanks

Neil Morris
Director
Freecycle UK

--
Freecycle UK is a Registered Charity (No. 1118148) and is a Company Limited by Guarantee (No. 05945013)
Copyright © 2003-2007 The Freecycle Network ( http://www.Freecycle.org). All rights reserved.
Freecycle and the Freecycle logo are trademarks of The Freecycle Network, CTM Reg. No. 4287553


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we wrote back to them, told them that it was far too late to change any publicity, but if it made them happy, we could send out an email to everyone saying we were calling it "Not The Freecycle Night", and include their threat to explain why, but if they wanted to come to our event they were welcome, along with their lawyers

the night ran without problems, obviously. Someone got a luxury scrabble set. I got a James Taylor Quartet CD.

I contacted Freecycle to let them know that all went without trouble, and that John Vidal of the Guardian wanted to talk to them, & that Caroline Lucas (Green MEP) was also wanting to know what was going on, and they replied ...

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Freecycle UK
Date: Nov 5, 2007 12:23 AM
Subject: Re: Fennerfest and Freecycle
To: Slough4Peace
Cc: South East  summerstardreamer@tesco.yahoo.com


Hey I like your sentiment as well. However, if we had of managed to talk
earlier it would have been a simple case of working with the local
moderators and ensuring it was officially approved. I think it could
have been a really neat partnership. One of the real big issues for us
is the issue of public liability insurance for such an event. If it is
advertised, as a Freecycle event, it is conveying that we are organising
it and there is a strong possibility if something goes wrong the
organisation could get taken to court. I had sent my email in an
informal way in the hope that we could come to some arrangement quickly,
to get the appropriate licence to use the logo and make it into an
official Freecycle event in partnership knowing that appropriate public
liability insurance was in place and that the event met our criteria. I
would much prefer to enable things to happen rather than limit them.

Hope you understand.

Cheers

Neil

==========================================


health & safety, you see.

What I think happened is after we contacted the local group to let them know we were doing the night, somewhere along the line their communications broke down, & the UK director found out by some other means, eg google search, and didn't know we had already made contact

but what it shows that far from being the voluntary movement they come across as, they're far closer to a company like McDonalds when it comes to threatening legal action against people they think they can just intimidate into silence

there's loads on the web about it, if you're interested, and lots of other alternative networks emerging ....