New Branding Policy

I was going to post some counter-reasoning and point out some flaws in your analogy to Disney and IBM, as well as some important differences between referring to a mark that is a company name versus using a mark as a brand name. But then I realized that you have declared it "end of story." I cannot but bow to this superior rhetorical flourish.

Well of course you can. What they are saying is, if you do so, they will reserve the right to terminate your use of SL. So whatever faux pas they or their lawyers have made of drafting this clause, in terms of stamping on other people's pre-existing trademarks or contradicting the fair use laws of all the countries SL is found in... they can still control their little world.

It is just unfortunate that there are a lot of other IT tech companies also using the term "grid" -

http://www.grid.org
http://www.ogf.org

etc.

(some of these IT tech firms, even being technical enough to allow URLs in forum posts)

Matthew

This is a very interesting conversation. At first I took it as a perfectly logical step on The Company Who Shall Not Be Named to protect the Product That Shall Not Be Named, for once showing some pro active business sense. But as others weigh in, and reading the announcements and Blogposts, it is looking like another clueless, ham fisted move, so it's Business as Usual.

Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.
Second Life. SL. Linden Lab. Lindex. LL. SecondLife. Grid. Hippo. Linden. Second lifing.

Pass it on.

Agree, sadly. This is what happens when you are not at least as smart as your lawyers.

Or more likely take something simple and confuse the hell out of it like a lawyer.

If everything were simple, then copyright infringement would actually be theft and piracy, rather than just compared to them by people who don't know any better.

People who have established stores on SL, especially those that bank on a trade name, should probably brush up on trademarks (and service marks) instead of either ridiculing or being panicked by this sort of announcement.

I suppose it serves me right that I'm now getting 404 errors when trying to post another response to this thread. I should know better than to defend an action taken by LL.

ETA: okay, got a post up - let's see if I can get the content in too ...



It's not unfortunate at all; in fact, it may be precisely this fact that blocks LL's application for registration - and isn't that what most people in this thread want, that SL's bid to register the mark GRID fail?

LL's application for the mark GRID lists the following description of goods and services:




Neither of the organizations you listed appears, from a quick look at their websites, to be providing these goods and services.

Here's an interesting application for the mark GRID that probably comes closer to LL's description of goods and services than the above companies do:




The applicant is a UK company called The Codemasters Software Company. Codemasters has several other similar applications in the works. Note that these application's filing dates are not earlier than LL's application date, however.

No, it just shows that their legal department is as competent at constructing a functional and correct legal announcement as their programmers are at constructing a functional and correct virtual world.

Absoultely not.

"Grid" had been used to define cyberspace in science fiction long before Second Life came along.

Who is trademarking whose IP?

Hippos is some LL internal joke. It is what comes up when your friends list isn't uploaded yet.

Be careful. They may be claiming dibs on "Cyberspace".

As I said (again and again) whether they are entitled to allowance of the application - which they have not received, I will repeat - is a separate question from whether it's out of the ordinary for them to seek the application in the first place. I don't think it is.

There are lots and lots of applications for the mark GRID in various computer fields. I posted the descriptions of goods and services for some of them above, including LL's. LL's application does not describe "cyberspace" as the goods and services for which registration is sought. It is considerably narrower than that.

VWOA went after our club because we used the VW logo in our club tags. We don't do it any more. They threatened to have us drawn and quartered and then fed to wild hogs after they sued us for every worldly possesion we have.

Okay who is *attempting* to trademark whose IP.

Additionally -
Its not even the first time "Grid" has been used to describe cyberspace in a 3D online game.

I understand them Trademarking "SL Grid" or "Second Life Grid" but trademarking "Grid" does seem funny.

Least they didnt have the nerve to attempt to trademark "Metaverse"

Matt, Adz (boy genius) came up with a way, for chat anyway. He created text containing the proper symbols and saved it as a gesture. So you can chat legally. Although it appears ludicrous to be "speaking" ®, and I have no intention of so doing.

Thank you, Maddy, and Maggie, and Feline for your voices of sanity. My intent with the OP was not so much to be alarmist as to poke fun at Our Hosts for the ridiculous way in which they've handled this. Trademarking "Hippos" and "Grid" indeed. Pfft.

Do you think over time they (who's name cannot be spoken or written) will TM the words, Borked, Lagg, Greyed, Ruthed, Crash Dummies, Lab Rats, Script Kiddies, etc etc?

Perhaps Paramount Studios would get worked up over them (who cannot be named here), using the word TelePorter? Aka Star Trek (can I say that?).

Would the makers of the game Sims (can I say that?) be upset at them (those that cannot be named here) using the term Sims? Would they be upset at the term Void Sim?

Isn't the term Grid from Tron? (can I say that?)

VR Platform suits the ermm.. 'Game' refered to previously, before TM was introduced, as SL (see there now you made me say it). I wonder how many uses of the letters PU can be used to describe/associate this ermm VR Platform... I'll start the ball rolling..

Pretty Useless

Physically Useless

Platform Users

Physically Undemanding

Can I start trade marking those?

Grid, in the context of www.ogf.org is a set of open standards for using widely distributed machines as a cluster for running any software requiring that level of compute or storage facility. The term dates from 1998 although many would argue the concept had been around longer - these days "cloud computing" seems to the in term...

As such a grid could be defined as a set of hardware and software to deliver any large scale application. There are a number of research projects using grids in this sense to deliver 3D visualisation, which then comes close to LL's definition.

To those working in the field of grid computing, trademarking "grid" is comparable to someone trademarking "operating system" (which, to be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if someone has tried).

Matthew

On an Apple® Macintosh®

Option + G = ©

Option + R = ®

Option + 2 = ™

I can't think of any instance where I will be changing the way I do stuff in Second Life, however.

And not enforceable, at least with existing language. Terms like "gridlock", "hippopotamus", "slingshot", "Aslan", "slippery", "slots", and so on can't be "stolen" by anyone, no matter how they might like to.

But the prohibition is against "made up" words. New ones. So, Our Hosts might be concerned about "Grid World", "HippoTech", "SLingo", or "SLavetraderz".

Maddy's right about one thing. It's standard practice in IP to claim the world, and then let opponents beat you down to a reasonable subset. But it really seems to me that Our Hosts have taken that practice a deal too far, well into the realm of the absurd.

Their World, Their Imagination. Shit, I probably can't say that now , can I ?

Allready taken - http://www.idg.co.jp/expo/grid/english/


Matthew

For the majority of users, there are no enforceable legal consequences. LL cannot prevent us from talking about them. We can say Linden lab, Second Life, SL, Itel, Microsoft, Coca Cola or whatever the hell we want and unless we use those terms in trade or commerce, they can't do a damned thing about it...

...except, we use their service at their discretion. They might not be able to sue us, but they can cancel our account and ban us. It's their Grid. They can do what they want with it.

Now, from a realistic perspective, does anyone truly think that they will be scanning chat and making sure that while we're in SL, we're adding the appropriate tm symbols behind their marks? Of course not. They don't want you to use their marks in commerce. With the amount of chatting that goes on in SL, it would be impossible to police, and how many people, outside of the very active users actually read the blog? The casual SL users don't read the blog, they just get online and play or build or do whatever they do. They couldn't give a flying F- about LL's trademarks.

If you use a Secondlife trademark in your store name, product name, promotions or whatever, you might get some grief, otherwise, this is just a tempest in a teapot.

Shit? Why? Have they trademarked that, too?

Oh, yeah... sorry. They have, in several ways:

Their legal department.

Their customer service.

The way they listen to concerns of paying customers.

The stability of the world.

Sorry, Brenda... I'd say they have that word pretty well sewn up, too.

I just gave the policy a quick read-through. It's all directed towards commerce, not towards chat. I don't see any prohibition on speaking Linden Lab's brands in normal chat. It's just a matter of getting it right in your promotions. When they say "using the logo in text" they don't mean in normal conversation.

Was there something in the new TOS that says you have to use the (r), (tm), whatever symbols in chat or forum posts?