Stolen business name?

It sounds like you're devoting way more resources to this venture than you could reasonably expect to recover from product sales in SL.

Due to the generic nature of the name you proberly don't have any rights.

That's a distinct possibility. I would have thought that Prim Savers is far enough removed from normal language that it could be registered as a trademark, but that's just my thinking.

Perhaps the website designers are friends. Maybe not pros, but non-pros can make good websites.

Just thought I'd bump this comment since it seems to have been posted several pages ago...

Lol

Outside SL, where you'd register your trademark and where it'd be tested, 'prim' means something different, and the combination 'prim savers' is pretty odd, so it's probably registerable. Trouble for Phil is that he probably hasn't used it outside SL. Grabbing the domain name would have been a good idea.

LL will not likely receive any kind of court order compelling them to do something, as this is a trademark and not a copyright issue. They might, if Phil is so inclined, receive a subpoena for RL info so that Phil could pursue legal action against Floyd. Except that Floyd is a Romanian living in Canada? and Phil is British? and LL is American, and that probably makes the process more challenging. It'll be interesting to see how this works and if Phil has the means to do anything about it.

and that was my final statement in regards to the topic.

Everything else after that page was more or less off topic, my position was stated there

Floyd's nationality isn't relevant. For that matter his location and Phil's location are also probably not a big obstacle because Linden Lab is in the United States and will recognize a U.S. trademark infringement claim for a registered trademark if it is still following its 2007 policy regarding trademark infringement claims.

You don't have to be in the United States or of the United States to get a federal trademark registration in the United States. However, it does take a fair amount of time to successfully get a trademark registration from the USPTO, usually at least several months even if no one files an opposition and the examiner doesn't find anything problematic with the application.

In addition to that most people need the assistance of a trademark attorney to complete the process which can run anywhere from $500 to a few thousand dollars in legal fees depending on what happens during the application process which is why, aside from being ignorant about registering trademarks, most creators in SL would probably never even bother applying for a trademark registration in the United States. It's cost prohibitive.

What policy? It's in the TOS that you're supposed to respect trademarks, but what authority is required to get them to act on violations? That is, what form does this "claim" take, who sends it, and is there evidence that LL has ever received and acted on one of these?

Well, LL has taken down trademarked items on XSL.

Yeah, but if LL receives a letter from Nike Inc's lawyers complaining about the unauthorised use of the Nike name and Swoosh logo (as I think it's called) on items on xStreet, there's not much doubt that Anne Avatar shouldn't be using the name and logo on her sneakers. Indeed, since Nike makes it clear on its website that no one but Nike Inc is allowed to use the name or logo, LL may not even feel it necessary to wait for complaints.

A situation in which two residents are arguing about which of them owns the trademark or name of a product that exists only in SL is a bit less easy to resolve, to my mind.

Floyd.

About 1½ years ago, LL took action against a user called Eva Capalini, by deleting her creations. If I remember correctly, the problem was with the animations but they wrongly deleted the scripts that had her name as the creator. LL cocked it up and wrongly screwed a lot of stuff up for people. There was a long thread here about it, and some checking was done with the creators of the animations that were in her furniture. It turned out that the animations in her furniture were all stolen - i.e. the creators had not given permission for anyone to sell them, except some who had paid for the permissions. Some of the creators posted in the thread.

It's the same animations set that many of us had in our furniture at the time - without permissions - and I had to create all my own animations to replace them. It's the same set that you have in your beds. If you don't have the creators' permissions to sell the anims, you need to sort it out.

That's intended to be helpful, as I was was innocently selling that set too - I'd actually paid a good amount for them, and I thought it was all above board.

I don't think this case is difficult at all, but I also don't think LL wants to set a precedent by ruling on this case, since future cases may be more difficult, and some requests may be unreasonable. More importantly, I don't think they ever want to have to rule on a borderline reasonable/unreasonable case (i.e., difficult to decide), so I doubt if they want to set a precedent by ruling on any resident/resident case.

Speaking of trademark infringement, I just got an invite to a sim. Got a notecard when I arrived that said I had to be a popular blue alien species or a human, so I couldn't go further in, but going by the entrance area BOY was that loaded with trademark infringements.

Oddly enough, the creators thought their trademark violations needed to be stupidly protected (no copy/no mod/no trans). Mmmm... chewy irony.

I'm pretty sure if you type the word "furniture" into search you are going to see Phil's store on the first page. I don't believe for a second that Floyd started a furniture store without ever having typed the word "furniture" in to search. Therefore it's clear that he stole the name from Phil.

I agree, quite simply. And I can understand the reasoning; LL really doesn't want, and shouldn't want, to get involved in adjudicating resident vs resident disputes like that.

It's difficult, because the international trade mark system wasn't really set up with micro-economies like that of SL in mind. In reality, I'd imagine the costs of resolving any dispute through courts, particularly if multiple jurisdictions are involved, would be way beyond what most of us would consider worthwhile.

Yeah, just got back from seeing that.

I'd lay odds that it won't be around too long. LL seems to be proactive in policing big-name IP rights, even without any requests from the IP owners. They squashed the Tolkien sims/creators, coming down on them pretty hardcore, without any notification from the Tolkien estate whatsoever.

Nope. Phil's not anywhere on the first page under the word "furniture". At least, not at the moment.

I don't know if he "stole" the name or not. It's just as likely he came up with it himself. That doesn't mean there isn't a problem, but it is conceivable that he could have chosen it without knowing.

It isn't like "Prim Savers" is all that unique of a name; it could be applied to just about any kind of prim object seller. That's why I don't think it could be trademarked anyway.

Yes, i found out about same thing just recently, after i purchased this one, true for a small price, but still..

Now in process of buying a good engine with much more animations and all agreements from the creator.

Good advice

....but the website and company registration is brand new......probably just the last few days.
The whole thing smells of shady practices....similar name as exisitng SL business, a rip off on RL logo and now the use of copybotted pose scripts inside his furniture (Eva Capalini's)

It seems you are quite an expert at discovering things rather late, but I don't think that that was the best thing to post in a public forum. What you're saying is that you've known about the stolen animations for a while and that you are continuing to sell them for now. Or to put it another way, you are selling things to your customers that you know are stolen and that you know could cause them problems in the future.

As I said, it wasn't the best thing to post in a public forum.

It isn't the scripts, it is the animations that are copybotted.

Those things are everywhere; I can't fault new folks for coming in and buying what they think are legitimate animations, since LL can't seem to bother itself to delete them.

That's one of the big problems with IP right now in SL. There's simply no way to tell for sure what is and what is not legitimate content.

LegalZoom.com really makes all that cheaper these days and will hold your hand through it to some degree, depending on which package you choose for the legal work. You can get a trademark done for as expensive as $800.00. and as low as $500.

Thanks

I found a set i like that costed me 15,000 and the animations will be replaced by end of day.

I also had a chat with LL and they found that the measures I take are going above and beyond what they expect. I stated that they will be replaced and a banner in my store, displayed by the beds will state that it seems the previous animations were compromised, and that any customer that was affected can get a free replacement of the product.

And the beds are currently just on display, not on sale, until animations are replaced. They are also taken out of the vendors.

And, no, Phil, recently doesn't mean what you want to mean. It means what it means.

And also, LL and everyone around seems to be aware that there are HUNDREDS of items with those animations around. And from very reputable shops around SL that have been around for a while... I can call out few items i saw myself by just looking for these today... "@ DESIGN Beach Animated Bed", ":::YNAPSE::: American Beauty bathroom set", "TLD Designs - Luxurious Timbers Bed with SexPose Menu (red)", "Master Gorean Bed (106 poses)", all around SL for MUCH longer than I have been and all rather large companies.

I, however, take action as soon as i found about it.