New Branding Policy

lol - it would almost cover the attorney fees you would incur trying to defend yourself from them.

uh.... wondering if a lawyer would take L's as payment?

If he or she does, and shows up in court wearing neko ears, you'll probably want to reconsider.

What? Ann is a lawyer?

lmfao.

Everyone knows that SL means "Simulated Lands" so I really don't see where there's going to be any problem here.

For instance, SLExchange is for buying/selling stuff for Simulated Lands...though I do notice that their listings do seem to be rather heavy in items intended for use in the Linden Lab® Second Life®™© virtual world, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence and shouldn't be a problem at all.

I explained it now the third time!

Can you hear me?

Maggie

Decided to err on the side of caution. Maybe they'll decide to go after third level domain names one of these days. Anyway, I made a good faith attempt to comply with the new rules, so I don't have to think about it any more. On to more fun things.

I keep a blog, and supposedly I should edit or brand any use of their name...

will I?

hell no, it's just as ridiculous as the trademark crap that adobe put up years back regarding the use of their brand name "Photoshop" (read it if you're bored and want a laugh)

sorry but I'm just not bothering tagging every little mention of SL or LL with a silly trademark tag (alt+0153 or &trademark for html).... it's a journalistic refrence, to a common brand/company name and if they don't like it they can bite me and pursue legal action.

I may be wrong but I don't believe you have to for every mention of SL or Second Life in the body of your blog. If you use it as part of the masthead or branding of your blog you'd need to do it there.

No. And I am not the only Neko on these forums either!

The law is that companies are in danger of losing their trademarks if they do not take adequate steps to protect them.

You can't blame Linden Labs for trying.

At least when the case comes up in which they have to defend their trademarks, they can show what they were doing to protect those trademarks, and not lose their trademarks based on prior inadequate protection.

You shouldn't be wrong, common sense dictates you shouldn't be wrong. However the latest blog just muddied the waters when Catherine said:

"2. Can I discuss the Second Life world on my website?
Of course! You can — and should — call our products and services by their names. For instance, it’s ok to say you’re “running a business in the Second Life world” or that you bought “Linden dollars through the LindeX exchange.”

The idea that bloggers have to say "Second Life world" "Linden dollars" or "LindeX exchange" is ridiculous.

Of course bloggers who aren't residents certainly won't have to do this and the mainstream media sure as hell won't be doing this.

The thing is, legal or not, they have residents over a barrel. So what if their claim to a trademark of "SL" won't hold up in court? If you have an in-world account with them, and you won't bend over for them, they can just cancel your account and delete all your stuff and reclaim your L$ because you were in non-compliance with the ToS.

It doesn't have to be something that's LEGALLY enforceable; they can enforce compliance through implied threat to your in-world stuff.

But can they really do this effectively when they have been so lax with it up until now?

Can't companies that have been trading for a while say that they have been in business for x years using that name, and that LL can't suddenly start enforcing something they were well aware of up until now?

ETAAh yes, very good point.... nobody is going to sue for the microsums we are talking about.

I think you're taking her far too literally. Those were examples, not a statement that you have to refer to something in SL as "in the Second Life world." Again I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

How else am I supposed to take her when not only does she say that, she links to the page that says you should quote in that fashion?

Catherine would have been better off just saying "Yes of course you can" and leaving it there, not linking to a policy document with further examples of how to reference.

I believe the point she was trying to make was that in that example of something you might say in the body of a website, blog, or forum post, there's no need for the TM after Second Life. The sentence itself was just an example to illustrate that.

This is an instance of new technology impacting the law.

Back when I learned what little I know about Trademark law was right before the internet explosion.

At that point, if you were a company that wanted to protect your trademark, what you had to worry about was published media. Mostly magazines, newspapers, television.

At that point, most people who weren't media professionals didn't publish anything. "Freedom of the press is fundamentally a matter of owning a press," to quote someone whose name I've forgotten.

Well, the world wide web has changed that. It has given everyone a dirt cheap press, on which they can publish to their heart's content with little restriction.

Blogs seem to have developed from people publishing was it essentially diaries online, to share with their friends. A lot of people still consider their blogs nothing more than diaries or journals that they share with online friends.

But then a lot of journalists started posting blogs, to write about the things that they weren't allowed to print in the magazines or newspapers that hire them. A lot of people read these blogs as a supplement or replacement to the regular printed or televised media. and now such blogs have acheived just about the same stature as newspaper or magazine articles. (Even though most such blogs fall below the already low editorial standards that most magazines or newspapers employ to supposedly assure quality.)

Many SL residents probably consider their blogs as little more than online diaries or journals. However, Linden Labs really has no choice but to view blogs on the same level that they view magazines or newspapers. Despite what may be the intent of the blog authors for something more personal than public, a publicly accessible blog is a publication just like Newsweek or the New York Times are publications.

So that's really why Linden Labs has no choice but to try to protect their trademarks when it comes to blogs.

In reality, I doubt they will take lots of action against blogs with small readership, other than "cease-and-desist" letters. When it comes to action, their main targets are most likely blogs with huge readership.

Maybe, but she used the exact phrases that are set as examples of how to reference Second Life trademarks in text, including the use of generic nouns.