SL Business Register

In last 6 mnths of 2004, my whole SL centered around a club I ran as another avatar, Robert Daguerre. Although we did hold the typical club events from time to time, it was never about that, it wasn't about dwell, it was just about a cool group of people who used to treat it as a second home in SL. It is one of the most enjoyable memories I have of SL, and I have always intended to reopen as and when time permits. I had hoped to get working on the club in the coming months.

A week or two ago I was informed that someone had opened a club by the same name. Now I do not have the the club open at the moment, but I still have two sims named after the club, and I still have all the club groups. I decided to check out the club and found that the colours schemes are very similar, and they're using exactly the same group tags. In a world that relies on trust and for people to do the right thing, I decided to approach two of them and appeal to their sense of right and wrong.

One person I approached was very polite, though it was clear she was not going to move on the club name. The other person I approached was totally obnoxious, rude, and basically had a 'your club is not in find, tough shit' attitude. Now first of all, I would like to know your opinions on this. It is my opinion, that if you have had an establishment in SL by a certain name, have all the groups still open, and sims named after it still present, it's pretty much hands off. What do you guys think?

At the moment I am having to deal with my issue via RL means, and it's not much fun, or cheap. This frustrating and infuriating experience has made me realise that we do need some kind of business register in SL, an in world trademark register if you will. Now people have suggested this before, and I have been one of those stating it would just not work. But I really think we need to think about a solution here, I am sure I'm not the first to have experienced this, and won't be the last. So, I would appreciate anyone's thoughts and ideas on this. Here are some of my own -


*It is clear to me that LL will not get involved in something like this (correct me if I am wrong LL), that this would have to be entirely resident run. That being the case, it is going to be difficult to convince a number of people that a resident run register holds any weight. We need to somehow ensure that it's clear that it is *everyone's* register. Hmm not well worded, but hope you get the idea.

*Proof of use of a mark from a certain date would of course be needed. We would have to agree on what proof is and is not acceptable

*Procedures and regulations would have to be in place to stop the potential abuse of this, ie the listing of multiple business names in the saem way some hoard domain names.

*Enforcement - this is the biggy really. So what happens when our register has done it's job, and someone is clearly using a business name already registered? It would of course have to be some kind of resident action, sanctions - well i dunno lol

Anyhow, I am not a big fan of governments etc. That's not what I am aiming here for, I just want to look at a way that we can stop the kind of thing that is on my plate at the moment happening to others. It also needs to be fairly simple and easy to run. What do you guys think?

It might not be just businesses either. There is someone out there selling a product called Dance-O-Matic. Granted, it's not an imaginative name and that was kinda the point at the time, but the fact is, Dance-O-Matic already was a popular product in Second Life and while I'm fairly sure it's unlikely people would for a moment mistake this new product for my original and long dead one or believe it's a revival or sequel, and while I'm sure this creator isn't attempting to cash in on my original in any way, I still think it would be altogether better if that potential confusion didnt exist in the first place.

So if you're gonna do it, maybe it should extend to product names and ranges, service offerings, and even your own regular event titles.

Oh yeh I totally agree. We need a way to tackle the more subtle confusion, the more extreme rip offsm, as well as all the grey areas in between, and yes, not just with business names, but trademarks in general.

Hehe its totally different - but just a point of note:

The Shelter opened on August 20, 2004 - at the time, in the Fudo sim.

Around October-November 2004 timeframe, Linden, in their infinite wisdom - launched a new sim called........ Shelter! By that time, we were already established enough to earn Developer Incentive - so its not like they didn't know who we were.

Boy was that fun for confusion. I just rolled with it, & didn't say a whole lot. In the end - what - a year & a half later, as you can see... I don't think its affected me much one way or another.

At worst, maybe a few folks teleporting into the center of the Shelter sim thinking they're coming to us, then asking for a teleport

I call anything DBZ -- the only other group ("Dragonball GT" was contacted and I was told they were going to disband it soon.

There. I gave public notice.

This may be the toughest challenge facing content and experience creators in SL, which may form a testbed for "micro value" intellectual property (IP) in other virtual worlds.

For those who have not seen it, a related discussion on the "Playboyz Trademark Infringement" thread at: /148/35/77704/1.html would be valuable reading in conjunction with the discussions in this thread.

I agree with your premises and your initial suggestions sound like excellent starts. The responses to come to your situation will be of great interest to the Observers in the Law Society.

Prak, I'm not sure of the point of your post. Can you please elaborate?

OK I think you are suggesting I have abandoned the mark? This isn't correct. Although my club has not been open for a while, the mark has always been part of my activities in SL

I have the 'Euphoria' group
I have the 'Euphoria Dancers' group
I have the 'Euphoria Residents' group
I own the sim 'Euphoria'
I own the sim 'Euphoria Island'

If you are suggesting that these are not enough, then I would ask what is?

Well I think we really need something to help preventing this kind of thing happening to more people. I am just a bit lost as to a starting point. These kind of things often end up in getting no where because of all the beaurocracy associated with it. We need something simple, trustworthy, reliable, respected, easy to run. But I feel a lack of replies may indicate the lack of interest in something along these lines.

If the same principle were applied to every bar/pub/club name in the real world, there would be a problem.

Here in the UK there are hundreds of Red Lions, Hare and Hounds, Crowns, Royal Oaks, White Horses etc. etc. and they all live happily together.

Sorry Hiro, I don't think there could or should be ownership of place names of this type.

Group names are probably a different issue (do LL allow the same names to be used for 2 or more groups?) but surely group tags cannot be owned (e.g. how many use 'member' as a tag?)

So do you think it would be ok to start another line of clothing branded as 'Pixel dolls'? Or do you think another club by the name of 'The edge' in SL? Or maybe a club called Pixel Dolls?

I am in the UK too Cliffy. I am not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure all those pubs with the same name belong to the same franchise business. It's certainly the case that you can not use a club name already in use - the only instances of that are again just many venues owned by the same company.

Some chains use names in that way but the names of pubs like the Red Lion et al. have been around since before the days of corporate chains of pubs.

And yes I understand why you have an issue with brand names - which I believe is a different point.

You don't give your source for stating that club names cannot be re-used...I really doubt that is the case. However the name of a company running a club or other business would have to be unique according to the Business Names Act (source:
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/gbf3.shtml )

You could be right on the pub names, I simplyt do not know for sure. And on the club names, no I don't have a resource. I stated this from having worked in the night club industry and being aware of cases going on disputing use of names/brands of clubs, tho I was not involved. I am sure if it was important, resources could be found. But let's face it, that's UK law. If we was to discuss legal implications, it would need to be US law, and even then we are in pretty uncharted waters with the use of it in SL.

Anyway, talking of law is kinda getting away from the whole purpose of the original post. I was trying to encourage a discussion on a way forward that avoids rl law, one that is based on common sense

The only law in SL that could ever avoid conflict would be LL rules - and they would have to make it impossible for any duplication of names of businesses, products etc. Without such rules you will inevitably face disputes such as the one with which you started this thread. How long would you suggest an existing name be unusable? ...I have heard of people being frustrated that they cannot use an AV name even though they are not listed in the residents list...either because the name was used by a long deceased AV or because they had made a mistake filling in the form and when they tried again the name was marked as used.

Enforcing uniqueness in names is fraught with such difficulties.

My intent was more to provide information about an aspect of trademark protection that is often overlooked; mainly that you cannot lock up a mark because you think it might be nice to use later. Furthermore you only get to keep people from using it in activities you engage in and use it for. Simply thinking of a mark first does not allow you to lock it away forever for anyone's use.

In my opinion, for a game that has only existed for a handful of years, not using a mark for over a year does qualify as abandonment. The inactive or unrelated groups should not qualify as use. Nor islands if they have been converted to other uses. In addition, not being in Find is pretty damning as you cannot reasonably expect someone to search every group and sim name and then somehow work out what they have been used for in the past.

Oh totally. I do not have all the answers, I am hoping that discussion may result in some ideas.

On the avatar name thing - I am of the opinion that av names should not be re-used. I guess I see names (both avatar and business) as more than just a word, I see them as an identity.

There are thousands of words in the english distionary, millions that are not, infinte 'made-up' words, and infinte combinations of words. Surely with a bit of common sense, we can avoid there ever being problems.

Oh I totally agree, however as I disagree with your following comments, I do not think it applies.


I am sorry Prak, but I would think that a chosen sim name shows more commitment to that term than simply putting in a find entry. The use of this mark is still associated with my activities, and these activities do not have a specific defined SL geographical location. Are you suggesting that what is essentially a word search map is the way to decide these things?

And yes, how the hell could I expect someone to go through all that bother to type the name 'Euphoria' twice, once under groups, once on the map. Yeh that is way too much to expect

I would really appreciate other people's opinions on this, those in agreement, disagreement, or indifferent all welcome.

So would a l33t name of a club, lets say "3uph0ri4" be acceptable?

I still think that it would be hard... maybe even impossible...to enforce rules like that.

Yeh I totally agree. Not just deciding on what is acceptable, but what to do if it is decided it's not, how is it enforced? I am totally with you in seeing that this seems like an impossible area. I have responded negatively myself with similar suggestions in the past, but this experience has opened up to me hearing about many similar stories of people having similar problems and just hoped to start a dialoguie of ideas. Luckily most of the time these issues do not come up, most do a little research (and I mean little) and avoid anything that looks to be in use.

Well I can only see 3 options
1. Leave things as they are
2. Enforced unique names by LL
3. Something like a Code of Conduct that would not be fully enforcable...perhaps something in the TOS.

I can't at this moment think of a compromise that would avoid the 'grey area' problems that you have just outlined.

Yes, if the Find entry mentions a club and the sim name does not.

While your activities do not have a specific defined SL geographical location they are specific activities. Trademark protection only exists for activities that you are actually engaged in. You have already stated that you have not been engaged in the activity of running a club for over a year.

You cannot claim confusion between the two clubs because there is, in fact, only the one. A club cannot be depriving you of income in your club business because of the use of the same mark because you have no club to make income on. Merely having the group and sims using the name says nothing about current or future use. How would you have people divine your intentions?

The only experience I have with trademarks or branding in terms of who has the right to use what is with band names - granted, not exactly the situation you find yourself in, but here's my two cents:

If a band publishes music under their group name, and another band comes along in the future and uses the same name, then the second band is required to change its name due to the fact that the first band has an official document (the publishing document), dated, with their name on it. Wierdly enough, this happened with an upstate NY band called Jimmy's Chicken Shack, who just happened to form right before the national band Jimmy's Chicken Shack had their one-hit wonder on the radio. (I'm so not joking about this. Who woulda thunkit?)

Anyhoo, in that case, the second band wouldn't be allowed to publish their own music under the JCS name, and if they continued without publishing but still performing under that name, they would be open for a lawsuit by the original JCS. Since there's no regulatory office in SL that would take the place of the publishing department, it would probably come down to actually taking them to court in RL - and we have yet to see SL jump to the RL arena like that.

So yes (long winded today, sorry), it would be good to see an official registry of business names that one could sign up with and refer to in situations like this. However, if the infringing business chose to not check or not honor the original business' claim on the name, there still wouldn't be much of a recourse left besides taking them to court.

1. That does well for 99% of the peole 99% of the time. In general, people in SL are pretty cool, do the right thing and have a common sense. But what do we do in the 1% of the time? In time one of the big companies will find themselves in the same situation. I wonder how a *Preen* nightclub not run by aimee would go down.

2. LL have given me the impression they will not make decisions on this, rather they would like to see disputes resolve as if they were in the real world. They will take action, but only as a result of RL action.

3. Yeh I was thinking along the lines of some kind of code of conduct. Again, LL will not get involbed tho, it would have to be resident run. I am sure the current TOS and CS cause enough problems without them wanting to add more

I was looking at a common sense solution not a legal one. But hey, I'll bite. I would suggest to you that the activity associated with this RL trademark is the use of the mark for virtual goods and services within a virtual world known as 'Second Life'.


I am not claiming it is affecting my income at all. But I do hold this mark as being closely associated with me, and many others do to. I have had a few IMs asking me why I had made some changes to the club, and why is it not in one of my sims. It is not about money, it's about reputation and association. These people may be great people, but the fact is they're not me. If a mark is associated with my activities in SL, I would like to ensure that I am actually responsible for any reputation - good or bad.