Huddles

Hey! You changed your link! And now I look like I'm just echoing you!

lol sorry, when you deleted your message at first, I thought that page needed to be linked because I didn't know about it. Didn't know you were going to re-post.

I deleted because I misunderstood what Ciaran was asking, then put it back because I thought it might be interesting to others.

Me? Indecisive?

However, it doesn't show up on the USPTO trademark search engine. IMAKEHUDDLES.COM shows as a proxied domain, so it seems unlikely that the trademark would be registered. (Since registering a trademark would expose Keiki's RL identity, and proxying the domain indicates that she doesn't want to do that.)

This is the problem. When I got the messages I thought what on earth is this about, as I assumed a huddle was a hud controlled group dancing device, it was the only context I'd ever seen it in and if I was searching for one to buy, that's the term I'd have used.

Which is the reason I opened this thread, to see how the land lies on this. It's really not my issue other than I had the word "huddles" in my land descriptions, classifieds, picks, which I think I've now removed and replaced with "dance huds" hoping there's no problem there.

I was under the impression that it doesn't have to be registered to be a valid trademark. If she consistently uses it as such and can document that usage, I believe it still counts. The site could be part of her documentation.

Where's Madhu?

Hi everyone, I guess I missed this thread. I didn't see it till tonight. Some points I'd like to make:

* My intention was to handle this quietly, directly with particular content creator. I feel the forums are a bad place to try to get these matters resolved.

* When HUDs first came out, no one referred to them generically as huddles. I searched and searched for the word 'huddles' in connection to either SL or HUDs. I found no references anywhere to huddles in connection to SL and chose it as my brand name in large part because I could make that my trademark. The only reason that people use that term in SL is because of my products originally.

* I've been selling animation devices (and other HUDs) under the name of HUDDLES Games & Gadgets and HUDDLES Headquarters since at least November of 2005. I'm sure I set up my store in October or even September, but the first sales I see in my records was early November. HUDs were introduced in September of 2005 I believe.

* For over a year and half, I never saw any reference to HUDDLES in SL that didn't have directly to do with my products.

* Most of the references that I find in the search today (when you search for parcels) are for either my parcels or parcels where my products are sold (that includes Animation Warehouse, Outrider, Ravanne, & the Witches Garden).

* To my knowledge, there is only one other person who uses the word "huddle" or "huddles" in their product names. Almost all of the other references traces back to a particular avatar (or their alts) which calls his products variations of ******** Dance Huddles. His products are not direct ripoffs of mine. They are his own design, however he is clearly incorporating 'Huddle' and 'Huddles' into his brand names and parcel names.

* I added TM to my promotional material last year after this problem first came to my attention on advice of counsel. The TM indicates that you consider it your trademark and you intend to register it (or that it has applied to be registered). (R) would indicate that it is has been 'registered' and approved by the government. I think it takes a year from application to registration.

* It's my understanding that trademark is like copyright. It exists even if you have not officially registered it. The registration is important if you need to go to court, but what is more important is who established the trademark first. Mine was well established before this person started making and selling their product.

* I plan on moving forward with registering the trademark and asking people to not use "huddles" in their brand names in SL. It's just very difficult finding the time to give to this matter given my current situation in RL.

I don't want to see this other person attacked or vilified, I just want to defend my trademark and make sure that my products are not confused with his. That's what trademarks are for.

I don't understand why he doesn't think of his own name rather than purloining that of another.

That's an easy answer - because he feels that cheating is the only way to break into an apparantly-saturated market.

Huddles is the plural of huddle, a noun referring to a small group of people stood or sat close together, usually for the purposes of discussing something privately or sharing bodily warmth. It cannot be copyrighted. You cannot trademark a word that is in everyday use except for the purposes of your specific business model. The concept is absurd. Otherwise, I am copyrighting the word "pie" from now on.

I think you could possibly trademark it for the purpose of referring to a programmed object on a virtual world, which is not something that would be confused with a group of people coming together. Likewise, if you wanted to create a brand of clothing called Pie, I think that'd be fine, as long as you didn't claim your trademark applied to food wrapped in pastry.

I disagree. Now if you specifically made an AO or simillar device and called it Huddles that would be infringement of copyright. But if I wanted to release my extensive line of Huddles lawn furniture, I'm damn well going to and no one can stop me. There are many real-world examples of simillarly, or even identically, named products operating in entirely different marketplaces - and that is fine.

Copyright and trademark are two different things. This discussion is about trademarks, not copyrights.

You absolutely can use an every day word as a trademark; you can even (in the US) obtain federal registration for that trademark and enforce it despite the fact that it's an everyday word, as long as it's not merely descriptive of the product or service being offered.

One can obtain a federal registration for the word "pie," and have an enforceable mark consisting of the word PIE, though you are correct that it would likely not be for a pie-selling business.

We have discussed at some length earlier in this thread whether HUDDLES could be a registrable and/or enforceable mark when used to describe a HUD dance animation system. In my opinion, the fact that "huddles" is a regular word is of no consequence; it's not descriptive of the product and it's therefore likely to pass the test. There are viable arguments the other way though.

No, the concept is laughable. That would be like you trademarking the word "cafe" for your business. It's absurd.

Either way, she needs to actually get it registered if she wants to be able to enforce it, and bothering the landlord of the person using it seems counterproductive to me. Copyright and trademarks are similar but not the same. Trademarks must be registered to be enforced by the courts. Copyrights don't have to be.

"SexGen" is a registered trademark, that's why Stroker was able to enforce it.

What I am talking about is not at all analogous registering the trademark CAFE for a cafe; it might be analogous to registering the trademark CAFE for a business that retails shoes - which would be perfectly permissible (provided someone hasn't already done so).

Unless the person who might seek to register the term HUDDLES is actually providing a gathering of football players or other people grouped together to conference about something, I just don't see the analogy and I don't see the absurdity. It's my opinion that the term HUDDLES is not a priori descriptive of a HUD dance animator, in the same way that CAFE would be descriptive of a cafe, or PIE would be descriptive of pie.

ETA: Snowflake, not all enforcement needs to be preceeded by (federal) registration.

But I do want to make clear again that I am talking mostly theoretically about what HUDDLES might mean and whether it would be the valid subject of a registration; I am not considering any specifics about the case that started this thread. I have said that above but I get the feeling that some of the people who are reviving this discussion aren't reading what was said above.

Most people, myself included, get bored by long posts of more than a few lines and so switch off half way through. There is a chain of pharmacists in the UK called "Boots" (I assume founded by a Mr Boot, I'm not sure). This would not stop me opening a boot shop and simply calling it simply "Boots". I maintain that the Huddles trademark is only applicable in the field of HUD animators, and that my Huddles lawn furniture would be entirely acceptable.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that the "Huddles" business only exists inside a computer game and so the only appropriate response to this thread is the phrase "lol internet".

A search at the US Patent and Trademark Office web site turned up 28 instances of the word cafe. Many, but not all, are for stylized drawings, but some are for the word.

The canonical example, mentioned earlier, is Apple. Are you going to suggest that's not a trademark? For that matter, google is a real word, too.

So, to clarify, there was more than one, yes? Which shows that the word "cafe" cannot be a trademark in and of itself - otherwise there would only be one instance of it. "Cafe Conan" might be a trademark, but "cafe" is not. Which is why my "Huddle Bear" stuffed toy range will soon be hitting the shelves.

It is possible for multiple parties to trademark the exact same word if their businesses do not overlap. The aforementioned Apple is a good example; there was a lawsuit leveled against Apple the computer company by Apple the record company after iTunes was introduced, alleging that iTunes represented the former muscling in on the territory of the latter.

Your earlier posts speak about this point directly, but your last post seems to forget it. For example:


I would tend to agree, but I fail to see the relevance. Where did anyone say Huddles lawn furniture is unacceptable?

Your posts, while somewhat informed, freely contradict each other in purpose and/or facts. You seem to be arguing simply for the sake of arguing.

Huddles lawn furniture is unacceptable

on a more serious note…

hack, no dammit I can't be bothered, but yes, morally the second person using Huddles for a similar product is taking the piss!

Yes, this is very much what I have been saying all along. (You could call your boot shop "BOOTS" but you shouldn't expect to be able to enforce that mark against other boot shops, by the way.) I wonder why you had to use words like "laughable" and "absurd" in response to my previous posts when you are actually in agreement with me.



In that case, you might have more success sticking to simple topics that can be explored in posts that are not too long for you to read. Or just - don't answer posts that you haven't bothered to read.

Yes, generally speaking, the word CAFE would not enforceable as an exclusive trademark when applied to a cafe.

That doesn't mean you can't use it - quite the opposite, in fact. It means that no one can exclude others from using it, when applied to a cafe.

If you tried to register a trademark for a phrase like "HAPPY CUP CAFE" or something, you would find that the (US) trademark office would require you to explicitly disclaim any exclusive right to the word CAFE by itself.

But you wouldn't have to disclaim exclusivity to HAPPY or CUP?

I think I'm starting to see the argument here: that given that, you should be able to create animations that show people huddling and call them "huddles" in SL because of the same generic term rule. Although Keiki's claim that most people didn't use the word "huddle" in SL until her products might be true, the first person to make a pie could argue that nobody used the word "pie" to describe a prim model until their product, but that shouldn't give them the exclusive rights to sell prim models with the name "pie".

I don't think I agree but I can see the issue now.