SexGen Take-Down order??

I've been following up on the SexGen lawsuit (well, sorta I mainly read just one article on it).
Today a friend of mine received a notecard by some avi (that is NOT the original creator of the SexGen) telling him to stop using the SexGen name on his menu driven products.

I don't know but this sounds like a bucket of shit! Almost everyone who makes sexgen items use the title SexGen for them. Is it now a violation of copyright to use the name sexgen on menu driven items you make?

Are his menu driven products Sex-Gen?

or are they something else?

ops

It's funny cause that's not who sent him the notecard.




And his items are menu driven animations of a sexual nature. He just named it sexgen because everyone is familiar with the name and are using that name for their own products.

Just a technical note... SexGen is a trademark, not copyright. Nevertheless, it is registered and protected. Using it is not legal unless you have the trademark owner's permission.

How many people DO something doesn't mean a thing. If the name SexGen is a licensed trademark of Stroker Serpentine...then only HE can determine who can use it and how. And since he created SexGen, and named it...yeah...calling your own stuff "SexGen" is a trademark violation. Using the SexGen script he developed for his products is a copyright violation. And if you're not using the SexGen script (let's say you use the PD MLP script, for instance...), then you're committing fraud by trying to pass something off as "SexGen" that isn't, really.

Welcome to the wonderful world of business and intellectual property law.

Sex-Gen is a Brand name.

Ironically it was trademarked by the person who invented Sex-Gen.

Your friend is exactly why trademark laws exist, and he is violating trademark in exactly the way you aren't supposed to.

Well the guy did copyright the name "SexGen" as a trademark a while back. But the lawsuit is a copybot type scenerio, where somebody copybotted a bed and now they are absolutely everywhere for super cheap and totally illegally. I would say that it is not to be taken mildly, the owner of the company has a great lawyer and is on a warpath for revenge, I wouldn't stand in his way.

*head explodes*

He really did come out with Sex-Gen first.

He wasn't the first to have a multi animation system. That was Hiro's Posecubes. But he named His multi animation system Sex-Gen.

This would be like telling Burger King they don't own the name "Whopper"

Well I'm sure he didn't know it was trademarked. But now he does

Is that a typo? Why would it be unexpected for a person who created something to register their trademark for it?

well why are you posting in the forums if you are just going to be sarcastic and make fun of the replies you get? I work in advertising for a living and I must say that copyright laws are huge now, and the internet and even SecondLife is a target. People have been pirating for a long time and the laws will change. Don't think just because you are 'ononymous' behind your avatar that you can't be touched. There have been numerous lawsuite this year within SecondLife involving people just as cocky as yourself. There is a direct trail back to your computer logging your IP address and your involvement within SecondLife, you can be in denial all you want but that won't make it go away.

Oh, I'm more than happy to stand in the way of the grown man who admits to designing a piece of digital softare that allows people to rub their digital winkies together...and then gets all bent out of shape when someone steals it.

I despise overprotective copyright laws...and I'm pretty pissed at Stroker for bringing the friggin' lawyer trash into the game. Shoulda just taken one in the face for the team, man.

Regardless of if he knew it was trademarked or not, he knew what he was doing. He wouldn't have done what he did if he didn't know what he was doing, in fact - it's the whole reason for doing it.

Actually I wasn't being cocky... so you don't have to snap at me.

I just posted it here to get the final ruling on it... and now I have it.

Trademark. Not copyright.

And yeah, I think all victims of theft should just "take one for the team" too. Otherwise, ya know...

No, actually, I can't think of any reason to think that. At all.

Sexgen = trademark ? (/327/0d/199758/1.html) identical issue to this one

Trademark infringement and cheap knockoffs (/327/8f/200145/1.html) has posts by Nova and Stroker.

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Until the recent lawsuit the trademark wasn't even registered, so I don't think that historically Stroker/Nova really cared about protecting SexGen as a trademark (it was never mentioned in any of the notecards, nor obvious in the store, nor can I really recall any attempt at control before the recent lawsuit).

Now that it's registered however they do need to make up for lost time and issue takedown notices or risk having their trademark invalidated.

Personally, I think they neglected the name and went without any sort of enforcement for far too long to argue that "sexgen" didn't simply become a popular synonym for "SL scripted sexbed".

Unless you're willing to hire a lawyer to dispute their trademark claim and you can show negligence and have it revoked you do need to comply with the takedown request though.

There are several strong arguments against IP rights.

http://libertariannation.org/a/f31l1.html

If you wish to read them.

The OP was about trademark...Stroker's lawsuit concerned copyright.

And I realize that Stroker has been both emotionally and physically cripped by his tremendous loss, so I don't want to seem disrespectful...oh, hell I don't really care.
He created the digital winkie wanker, someone saw it and said "kewl" then copied it. Sure...the asshat who copied it was in the wrong...but this lawsuit isn't gonna put the genie back in the bottle. All it's gonna do is increase the amount of litigiousness in the world.

Stroker was lookin' for some payback. He got it. But, frankly, once the MLP script went public....meh.

So, sure...I'm an uncaring monster for not weeping over this broken victim of intellectual property theft.

Sue me.

Libertarianism always sounds better before the libertarians open their mouths, IMO...

/borderline libertarian.

No, but I can't bring myself to find any sympathetic light to cast your "He shoulda just taken one for the team" comment.

Well they probably didn't care about protecting the name "Sex-Gen" till people started ripping off the name which was quite a while later.

Since fist Sex-Gens had to become popular, well known, well used. SO that people would know what a Sex-Gen was. That way ripping of the name meant something.

Sex-Gen was a unique name for a good long while before more recent attempts by the competition to genericize it.

I think part of the problem is the SL community is a bit insular and those of us older residents often don't have a lot of connections with newer ones, thus the name seemed to slip to a generic pretty rapidly.

Good point, Chris. But IP rights DO exist. They are the law. You can argue against them as being bad law, but until they're changed, people have to obey them or risk being fined, sued, etc.

While we can argue all day and then some about IP, at bottom I think that the creator of an original work deserves to profit from that work, not have it copied and redistributed by someone else. That's what trademarks, copyrights, and patents are all about.