Let them eat cereal

Am I missing something? I thought it was Shiryu who got AR'd.

- Did Cereal get AR'd too or did Linden Lab act on the obviousness of the activity (i.e. Cereal raised a dying thread and brought a bunch of attention to his violations as well)?
- Did Cereal raise that thread back to life after getting an AR?
- Is it possible a car competitor took the opportunity to use the LL trademark policy to wipe out competition by submitting AR's?
- Are there any non-RW branded wheeled vehicles in SL (I've not seen any myself)?

Yo momma so stupid she makes Zack Cline look intelligent.

I don't get it.

Real world companies make themselves rich. I'm all about Team Jsecure. My company in SL is Jsecure Hanks Industries, and my company IRL is JDDLan.com LTD as registered with Companies House in the UK.

I work from 9am in the morning to 1am at night every day making my companies better and working in my career as a software guy.

I can't understand why anyone would replicate a real world car brand. I'd stick my branding on those cars, with a sexy logo, and I'd have BMW emulating ME, not the other way around (that is if cars in SL was what I do).

Yo momma.... Yo momma.... hold on a sec (I'm off to http://www.google.com/search?q=yo+momma+jokes) for a sec...

Sorry, I didn't read the whole Shiryu car-crash of a thread, so my answers are 1) Dunno, and we won't know 2) Dunno 3) Yep, but although maybe a jerky move it is allowed 4) Dunno about cars, but all other vehicles I've seen have been clearly branded with novel brands.

I really don't see why you couldn't just make a car company outta Cereal Milk Motorsports.

This is almost as illogical as when I was going to stop making birds because I was called a chicken all the time, now that I look back at it. c.c


BUILD YOUR DREAMS!

(And make sure the horn plays 'La Cucaracha!')

Whatz up with all the car people removing and changing their logos/cars.

Just rebrand them. I seriously don't understand what the big deal is. Here's something to consider... If I buy a car in SL that's sold as a Ford or Chevy or some other real world brand, that's the name I'm going to have in my head associated with that SL product... not Cereal Milk... not the name of the person who actually made it. Why would a creator want that? Doesn't it make a whole lot more sense to build your own brand around your own brand name? LL's policies about trademarks might be inconsistent or even indecipherable but that doesn't change the simple common sense benefits of building your own brand.

Maybe they want to play pretend "oO.O.oh i own a ford"

or they lack creativity of creating their own brand cars.

This guy had no imagination either...

He should have called it a "lego vulva", for the sake of intended parody.

Which gets to a problem nicely outlined here.

I could understand someone wanting to own a Ferrari, but a Ford??

I think the problem here is brand awareness. Chip has spent a long time building up a great business in SL and most people here have heard of Chip Midnights Fashions.

But if you were starting a new car sales business and wanted instant success, do you think it'd be more profitable to sell Ferraris or Milk Mobiles?

Yeah sure it's cheaper and easier to ride on the back of someone else's (marketing) work, but it does have it's pitfalls and ultimately less reward in the long term so maybe rolling up your sleeves isn't such a bad idea.

The car I sell is an original design, but it wasn't me that reported either of them. They both do good work, and it doesn't make business sense to hurt the industry I'm a part of.

Which pretty much negates the theory that it's not about the money.

Well, Enabran, I'm empathetic and you're not. Clearly not.

This isn't a matter of skirts to hide behind. Notice I said, "pains ME."

I am telling you of MY pain. It is what can make these boards a miserable place for me, and for more people than just me. And I do mean miserable.

As for your second point, I can tell the difference between people who are fighting, people who are yelling at everybody, people who are defending themselves, people who are logically discussing, people who are upset and people who are not upset, and all the other variations, including people who just rush in just to be sure to get their own turn to beat a person when he's already down.

coco

Typo, Freudian slip, or joke? The world may never know.

Actually there are designers selling Baby Phat with logos, Gucci with logos, Armani with Logos, Fendi with logos, Nike with logos (Nike is probably the worst, their corporate counsel will send a C&D letter out faster than you can say sux!), LV with Logos, etc etc. Clothing designers are the worst offenders so far of tradenmarks in SL, yet they continue to sell with no issues.

Where are they? I'm starting to look for them, but don't know where they sell stuff.

Michael? Michael Eisner? Michael Jordan? (pray tell, Michael Linden?) Michael Gobstopper down at the local grocery store?



You're in luck then. You're not a content creator, you're a content thief, so you should feel quite safe. "Creating" is a process much more involved than just rezzing prims and shaping them to match a pre-existing design. There's an element of uniqueness and originality to it. Otherwise, the $4.99 plastic Ming Dynasty Vase I have sitting in my living room by the fireplace (that I bought at Target, they're such nice folks) would be just as valuable as the 2,000 year-old one is was copied and based from.



I commend you for your decision to remove the infringing material from public sale. As others have stated, it might have made more sense to just remove the logos and come up with your own branding, but hey, no sales at all is still better than petty thievery.

As far as your RL salary goes, I'm not exactly sure what relationship it has to do with anything here, but hey - whatever floats your boat. As long as it's your own creations, and not just leeching off the works of others.


- Newfie

re: Eboni, sorry to hear that there is so much brand theft in clothing... well, i guess the way the winds are blowing, that may change...

re: psyra, you know, when i saw cereal's post, your post about stopping because of the chicken comments was exactly what i was reminded of. Glad you didn't stop, and I hope cereal doesn't either.

re: "michael linden" -- his comments to Cereal certainly show a puzzling amount of naivite, or an excessive amount of cockiness vis a vis their risk exposure. I doubt you would find Philip, or a board member of Linden Lab, talking about IP quite so frivolously -- but then, they would view financially draining lawsuits more seriously. But then, who knows...

re: Cereal, i consider you a friend, just happen to disagree with you on this issue. I feel like you are letting some of the hardline stances posted harden your own views and responses. Building is fun, don't lose sight of that, even if you have a bitter taste right now.

I'm not sure I understand how this wouldn't make business sense. Rezzing prims is a long way from the kinds of issues that might make this sentiment valid in the RW. Please help me to understand how this hurts an SL "industry", and by apparent extension how it would hurt you.

Please note that you have the paraphrasing of an admittedly irate player as source of the quotes which is not usually the most accurate source. It could be true, but I wouldn't form an opinion based on that report.

(emphasis mine)

Okey dokey. So, Cereal uses a trademark illegally then makes money. He is called on it. He 'voluntarily' removes (will remove) his product from SL. Am I correct, so far?

His next step is to make an announcement in the fourms--an ill-advised move in light of other recent threads. So, what is the biggest sin here? The initial violation of laws regarding the use of registered trademarks? Mis-taking the cultural and political temperature of the SL community? The initial post? The strident posts that followed?

I have read and re-read this thread in an attempt to find what lies at its heart. Any insight?

Well... Prims have certain limits. It's much easier to design your product from within those limits, than to stretch the limits and recreate something as complex as the shape of a RL car. And then on top of that, vehicles have a very limited prim count, which makes recreating them even harder.

When I made cars of my own design, (never released) I found it incredibly easier than trying to recreate one from RL. So the idea that recreating something from RL inside of SL is somehow less involved or artistic than making something original is insulting. No, it's not the real thing, but I sold them somewhere in the neighborhood of US$1.50, not $30,000.

As for trademark/logo issues.. *shrug* I don't know. I took my cars off the market a few months back. The thing that's holding me back is not trademark problems, but rather, how crappy the current physics are, especially for cars. But that's for a different topic.

When I do decide to bring my cars back (plus about 10 or so models that I never bothered to release) I need to clean some logos off 1 or 2 and consider renaming them.