Trademark Materal

Actually, most of the companies you name have been historicly strict with their trademarks. They would NOT be amused.

Can you link me to one? I've never seen one of those, and it really doesn't seem like something Bub Linden (LL's web site designer) would do, having been to quite a few of his photoshoots.

Regards,

-Flip

Inlcuding lawyers in some cases (!).

Zaza: Second Life is a game (regardless of what Phillip Linden is trying to push it as) but it's not "only a game". In fact... very few games are "only a game". "Only a game" is the last refuge of the card-sharp, the cheat, the crooked handicapper, the spoiler, the griefer, in fact... the people who don't play by the rules of the game in the first place.

One of the rules of the game is "no copyright or trademark infringements". Play by the rules or play a different game.

Then do it again with your own artwork.

No. That would be, um. No. In fact, no, it's not. Remove the last two words: "it is a REQUIRMENT for LL employees to take down trademarked materal if they were notified". That's it.

But do you think it is fair competition to people who try to make their own brand. The people who use trademarks of big compagnies not only use their marks but also the multi million investment in getting the worldwide recognition.
It demotivates people to create their own ideas and encourages to create cheap knockoffs.

Or if Bill Gates came to SL and saw someone with a prim computer displaying a windows desktop? o.o OH we gota put a STOP to this.... XD

I'm probabaly a minority in this, but I value creativity. So when I see someone leaning on someone else's work, it turns me off and I spend my money elsewhere.

I agree with you to an extent. I have a small car company in-game, and I build original designs that are only vaguely based on RL cars, if at all. And the sheer number of RL car replicas in SL makes me twitch. And most of them aren't even that good, and the average SLer wouldn't buy it if it didn't vaguely resemble an Escalade or something, especially at such exhorbitant prices.

On the other hand, the way trademark and copyright laws are so misused that I could never stomach the idea of actually ARing someone for infringement, unless I happened to own the rights to whatever was being infringed, and even then it'd only be if they really ticked me off with it.

Dude is Already Here

Rughster, I'm still waiting for an answer to this question; making an accusation that Linden Lab is intentionally covering up trademark and/or copyright infringement for use on their own web site and benefit is a pretty serious accusation. I'd like to see some proof, as this seems our of character for both them and their lead graphic designer.

Regards,

-Flip

Here's the problem with the whole attitude regarding trademarks: companies have to fight to KEEP their trademark material exclusive or else they could use them.

Copyrighted material is someone's property. Sorry, it's as simple as that. Unless you are parodying them, it's very difficult to make a case.

You screwed up. Accept it. Move on, make something original. LL employees are doing what they have to do in this.

Cricket, you have no idea just how UNFRIENDLY Disney and Sanrio (among others) will get if they see you using trademarked and copyrighted materials that they own. They don't view it as free advertising. They don't /need/ free advertising. They are the big guns. They have very large lawyers to match.

Sorry about the slow response, i'm not in the forums often...

I did some research for this. The mainpage image in question is:
http://secondlife.com/_img/homenav/05.jpg

the original logo was an Element logo:
http://www.9star.com/product_images/medium///0/310/313/345/66799/66800/10846.jpg

I bought the 'original' shirt in SL when i was a noob.. with the Element logo on it. I went back to where I bought it and indeed it has changed from when i originally bought it:
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/4396/hack0010oi.jpg

As you can see my confusion because I had the shirt, but it seemed the Element tree logo was 'shopped out on the SL website. It seems like the original 'designer' got into a little trouble and had to take it out of their circulation.. at least logo wise.

No harm, no foul.

Many companies aggressively protect their trademarks - they have to.

At the base of it - I think everyone can agree 'it's not the right thing to do'.
I think we can all agree that LL have taken things down when they are brought to thier attention.

I also think that most of us can see why. We don't want Disney or Levis or any other company going over SL with a fine tooth comb and bogging down a small company with unneeded legal complications.

There are many posts here on 'intellectual property' and the rights of creators - How can we honestly expect those to be enforced if we ourselves don't respect those rights in others?

It's not a one way street.

And if one is brought down and one isn't - it doesn't make on of them in the right - it means one was caught and the other hasn't yet.

This is pretty much my attitude as well. I find that people reproducing RL brands in SL purely for the cachet that that brand has already generated makes my trigger finger itch. Unless it's for satirical or other suitable cultural purposes I have no sympathy for anyone who gets into shit for doing so.

On the other hand, I hate the copyright laws that exist in RL and thus would never report somebody over them out of principle, unless they really pissed me off in some other way.

The thing is that major brands impinge on the public consciousness to an extent where using - or indeed distorting - their trademarks should often be considered legitimate as satire, commentary, reference to things everyone knows about. Except it isn't. That's not to say that a slavish copy is anything worthy of defending, but the current system doesn't differentiate.