Do you know if this domain name is legal ?

http://www.secondlife-france.com/

Is it conform to Second Life Branding center ??? I guess not...

i would say the guy that took this Domain will get into trouble with Linden Labs pretty soon, as it leads to the wrong impression that this might be an official page of Linden Öabs.. Ask yourself if a name like www.microsoft-france.com would be legal.... So in my opinion trouble for the owner is on its way...

and he should know that as the domain was taken about 4 weeks ago on 15/01/2009

He does have better images than the official site though. *ponders* Okay, so that's not really difficult...

I think that the domain name is not conform to Second Life Branding center.

That said, they hypothetically could have a license to use the domain name. Personally, I don't think they do, but this is not much relevant.

I also note that all their activities appear to be actually hosted at libertasl.com - the secondlife-france.com domain appears to be a sort of redirection portal to libertasl.com pages.

This looks like a smart move to me, as they are probably waiting for LL's first move (that will simply be a takedown request): later, they can stop using secondlife-france.com at any time, and their activities will still work at libertasl.com. Until they keep using secondlife-france.com too, they're probably getting a relevant boost in SEO and visibility.

I'm tracking other prominent cases of LL trademark violations in domain names and it looks like in most cases Linden Lab is not actively/aggressively enforcing their trademark policy...yet.



note:
my english is poor and I will appreciate grammar/syntax suggestions/corrections,
please send a private message here in this forum.

/me is not seeing a career in becoming a freelance copyright nazi on LL's behalf here in the forum.

The pictures are definitely nice, though.

The Terms of Service state clearly that "secondlife" cannot be used in any URL.

Ibtwsl

deja vu

what do you mean ?

brand new account..
phake-ass SL url
phishy phishy dejavu

i wouldnt click on it. haha

There are two separate legal issues.

Violation of the Terms of Service is a contract violation. It would depend in part on whether the person using the name even has a Second Life account. If not, he (or she) has no contractual relationship to Second Life and the Terms of Service have no bearing on him whatsoever. Now, looking at the site and going by the pictures (I can't read French), it looks like he does have an account. That means only that Second Life can drop his account, and potentially sue him for breach of contract (i.e., spend $50,000. in fees and costs for a $100.00 judgment that Linden Lab will never collect).

The second legal issue is trademark infringement. The fact that the domain name contains "secondlife" within it does not automatically incur a trademark violation. The question is going to be mainly whether the use of the domain name creates confusion about whether the site is affiliated with Second Life. I can't read French, but it looks like this site has a potential trademark problem based on product confusion. The problem Linden Lab has with protecting its trademark are (a) it has to pay people to seek out infringement, and has to pay attorneys to protect the trademark (b) if they do not aggressively protect the trademark, the could lose it.

Linden Lab seems pretty cash-strapped generally, and probably can't afford to protect its trademark as it would like. That's different than, for example, Disney, which has stockpiles of money, lots of experience defending its trademark, and has trademarks that actually translate into huge profits and are worth spending lots of money to protect.

I am not asking you to click, just to tell me if this domain name is allowd by Linden Lab.

Thanks Amity

Without clicking...

It could very well be a subsidiary of LL.

Why not IM a Linden in-world or through the forum and ask them?

Read what I wrote above and go read the TERMS OF SERVICE. It's clearly stated there it is not allowed.

yes, it is not allowed but it exists. How could this be possible ??

yeah but does it apply if you aren't bound by the "term of service" of SL, as in, non resident?

Linden hasn't gotten around to enforcing it yet. The people who administer domain names don't do complete trademark searches before approving a domain name. It's up to the trademark owner to enforce their rights.

Especially since trademark laws differ in many countries.

I just checked the online European Union database for trademarks. "Second Life" is a registered trademark in the European Union (reg no 0921881, by Linden Research Inc.). Which means that if anyone tries to do something in France with that domain name they will get in trouble. Especially if the use of the domain is even remotely associated with the Linden Lab product "Second Life", which I suppose it will be!

Right...and I would suggest to everybody not to use 'secondlife' in their domain names.

That said, I think that -as Kidd wrote- it's up to the trademark owner to enforce their rights. Until the owner doesn't do that, you may not get in any trouble.

Actually, I know at least three active websites that focus on Second Life - they all use "secondlife" in their domain address, and they're still active after many years. They're not personal websites, they're community websites used by many people. I talked with a person that manages one of these websites. I was told Linden Lab gave him the 'OK' about using the 'secondlife' term in his domain address; that conversation with LL happened before they changed their trademark policy, so personally I'm not 100% sure his website is 'OK' as he says. Nonetheless maybe Linden Lab actually gave him an appropriate license. Maybe that happened to secondlife-france.com too.

would'nt second life fall under the "generic term" exception?

i mean itsnot a madeup word it's two words from the dictionary so...

So are a lot of words used in trademarked names. It's not the words themselves that are the issue. It is the use of those words, in a specific combination, used to convey association with a specific product.

TV and Guide are two common words. Put those two words together in your own domain name, and then use that domain to publish television listings, and you're going to get sued.

Using the words Second and Life in the domain name of a secondhand-goods store may or may not be a trademark violation; but secondlife-france.com is clearly not such a site.

Trademark law is complex and differs between countries.

I would worry about possible confusion. LL could argue that the way the name secondlife was use could confuse people into thinking that the site was an official LL Second Life site.

Using that URL with nothing to indicate that it is not official and is not related to LL is risking legal problems.

Mary
(the above is not legal advice, only my personal opinion)

The site is absolutely about the Linden Labs' virtual world Second Life. However, down at the bottom of the page, they do acknowledge the name Second Life as a registered trademark of Linden Research, Inc.:

The site is quite similar to secondlife.com in design, which means even more trouble. It's not only trade mark violation, it's also, as Maybeth points out, possible that a visitor thinks it's an official Linden Lab site.
Furthermore, they are using statistics from the real SL site (number of residents online etc), meaning that they are tapping data from the real SL site. If I was a Linden Lab lawyer, I could make a long list of possible violations to bring to court.

They use two domain names, libertaSL.com and secondlife-france.com. They claim on the site that "libertaSL.com" is in compliance with Linden Lab's trademark policy (which is probably correct). So if they know about the policy, why do they use secondlife-france.com, which obviously is problematic according to the same policy? Weird...