Sexgen = trademark ?

I think there is a difference between saying "buy this sexgen bed" and if in a classfield text at the end are searchwords.

Even i can write in my classfield" "but sexgen beds are the best".
Nobody would know that i mean strokers, and i dont say that i sell sexgen beds, right ?

I dont think that it is "illegal" to have a trademark name in the search keywords.
I'm wrong ?

Not anymore illegal than it would be to the thousands of "fords" "chevrolet" and other car makers to say on television that their product is "better than" the other, or all of the politicians who make slanderous accusations on television against their oponents. Take this recent jack in the box commercial where they were sued because of their television advertizing for referring to the angus as the "hind end" by Carl's Jr. Now their lawsuit was dismissed because Jack In The Box did not "directly" say that the angus was in fact the hind end, but left it up to others to make that assumption. It's all a part of marketing and it is how the advertizer chooses to make his/her point clear. Everyone is going to argue about who has what rights, and freedom of speech is one of them, at least here in the US. To be respectful to the "sexgen" creator, it is a proper thing to remove the "label" from your ads and land titles, although if a battle were to be ensued, where trademarks are concerned depending on what you are telling your customers in your ads, it might not hold up squat in court unless you were directly saying what you sold in fact was a genuine "sexgen" bed. They might have a hard time fighting someone who says "my sex beds are better than so and so sex bed".

So i guess Sexgen is the new "angus".

For the record, I and my RL husband own and operate Lovers Playground and Mystique Designs, and we DO NOT represent ourselves as sexgen in anyway. As far as the "Johnny come lately's", I am confidant the reference was not to us. We too are appalled at the abundance of lack of morality (although not surprised)when it comes to people using another companies name and hard work to make a quick buck. These people obviously have no idea how much work it takes to make quality animated furnishings. The new businesses, if you can call them that, have been and will continue to profit on the hard work of others. Obviously having not one single original idea of their own to build on, they instead use a name, a name that regardless of whether it is or isn't trademarked belongs to that company. I agree that just by saying my items "genuine sex... or looks like sex..." is an obvious attempt at just this. Having had our own animations and scripts stolen many months ago by one of the most unscrupulous avies, and not doubt person, I have ever come in contact with. She then, along with help, started selling those animations and scripts as her own for FULL PERMS. This is what has caused the huge influx of so called sex bed makers. These individuals did not have to either save to buy the animations, make them, or even come up with an idea, all they had to do was run with ours, as well as several others hard work and say weeee come get your $50L bed, then with no skill, let alone knowledge of how they work, they rake in a few bucks. Then leave the customers hanging with no support, because um, they have no idea how they work, they didn't make them.
This was mostly to explain what many seem to be confused about as far as us leaving our animations etc full perms, THIS DID NOT HAPPEN. Linden Labs doesn't know how it happend but it did. (most likely a bug)
We support SexGens concerns on the missues of their name, we infact inform tour customers we are not sex gen, many come to us looking for a "SeGen" bed, we immdiately make it clear we are Lovers Playground, LP, not SexGenand hand them a SexGen LM. Here inlies the problem, most purchasers of such items, are new, and have no idea of who anyone is in regards to comapany names. They simply heard that a sex bed is a sexgen.
Having said that, if I use the phrase "works like a sex gen", or "we are not SexGen" simply because I am aware that people confuse the sex beds, I am not implying we are SexGen, and thus not breaking any laws. Many a shop, even actual items, have LoversPlaygrounds name, unless and untill that stops, well, good luck Sexgen, people are going to do it, they do it to us.
Try searching Lovers Playground, I gaurantee there are tons, that aren't us.

This is a good point.

In the normal world places say "Compare to X brand" all the time - that is a legitimate sales technique.

So if your bed is comprable to sexgen it should be fine to tell people that - you just cant say it is a "SexGen"

And in this posters case they dont sound like they would want to call it Sexgen.


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The issue that noobies dont know the difference between a multiple animation bed is and a Sexgen bed is is a bit seperate - Sounds liek Sexgen needs a "Use only Genuine SexGen beds" ad campaign.

How would you try and get LL to enforce a trademark that isn't registered?

LL is protected from any kind of copyright violation on its servers, but there is no protection from trademark infringement even if they're not the ones committing it. As far as I know there isn't anything making them liable either, but a trademark owner could still sue LL for not taking the appropriate actions and the outcome wouldn't necessarily be in their favour.

http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/2006/06/trademark-issues-in-second-life.html

Comparative advertizing is legal, but only to some degree. I can claim that my softdrink tastes almost like coke or even better than coke, but not that it's identical with coke.

As for trademarks: even if SexGen wasn't registered as a trademark, it would have trademark status simply by being used as a trademark.

Dilution of the mark by the public is possible grounds for abandonment too. If sexgen now means "any sex bed on SL" rather than "a sex bed made by Stroker or Briggi" it's become generic.

what im saying is during all this time of perceived inactivity - they might have been complaining to LL .

Im not actually stating what LL could/should do.

Just we wouldnt hear about compalints to LL necessarily.

I think most peop;e do know the difference.

However, rather than EXPLAIN they have a non Stroker Sexgen bed - they just call it a Sexgen since everyone knows what that is.

Its more a case of lazy people than of any lack of attempting to enforce brand distinction.

SexGen was first registered as a trademark and the product copyrighted in 2005 by Stroker's RL company, Eros. I've known Stroker for 8 months and in that time I KNOW that he has actiively persued infringements of his trademark and copyright.

I had no problem finding this in the US Patent and Tradmarks office online search:-

Word Mark SEXGEN
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Scripted animation system utilizing a defined menu to actuate avatars within a virtual world accessed through a 3-dimensional virtual platform. FIRST USE: 20050101. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050101

As other posters have mentioned, the problems are that people are abusing the SexGen trademark to sell thier own products which are NOT SexGen, causing confusion to customers who often subsequently come to the Segen Stores or User's group looking for assistance or upgrades, only to be told that the product that they bought thinking it's SexGen, is in fact, not.

Are we to take it, then, that the filing in US District Court in Florida was perjurous in claiming "On or about June 11, 2007, Eros filed an application to obtain federal trademark registration, serial number 77202601, for the Mark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office"?

(It's beyond me why anyone would want their product tainted with the SexGen(TM) label anyway, except as a generic term, but... SL is a strange world.)

I'm curious why you left off the most important part?

Mark Drawing Code (4) - STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number - 77202601
Filing Date - June 11, 2007

That pretty much invalidates your entire post.

I have no idea about that, I would speculate that it was an update for a wording change. I do know that the copyrights were renewed at that time so that they referred to the latest V5 SexGen software, that SexGen was first trademarked on 01/01/2005 and that the copyright filings were also first made in 2005.

The court case is a seperate issue to this thread. That is about somone who has been selling identical digital copies of the products, complete with original SexGen packaging.

The OP of this thread was asking about a message they had received requesting that they stop using the SexGen trademark in their advertising and classifieds listings.

As one of Stroker's Estate Managers I have issued 27 takedown notices this week to people who are using the SexGen trademark to describe their products, usually in the signage or naming of non-sexgen beds. Most had done so inadvertently and acted quickly to remove all references to SexGen. I'll be following up on the others in a few days, whereupon any further action required will be taken by Stroker to protect his legal IP rights.

Maybe, maybe not. Patentability isn't so easy to determine.



I suppose you mean DMCA. What kind of DMCA claim did you have in mind? The DMCA doesn't apply to trademarks.



It's not yet clear. Courts have imposed liability for use of other people's trademarked terms in metatags and also when there is "excessive" use of a competitor's trademark in the text of a Web site. The piont is, if it looks like you're trying to misdirect consumers who are searching for the genuine article, then it's more likely that you're infringing.



It's very common for generic perfumes to state that a particular perfume is identical to a name-brand one. That's not infringing.



Actually, it does not invalidate his entire post. The only part it invalidates (possibly) is the part saying that the trademark was registered in 2005.

If you are confused as most of you may seem to be, you should visit this site

http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/pg/1/objectId/A20673AB-676B-43D5-826517CBCE04A322/catId/D067F3DC-202E-4EF7-AAEEEFB60061533D/310/266/ART/

that is a meta tag and customer confusion legal informational site where trademarks are concerned. I would suggest checking out the entire site before making any informed decisions.

Meta Tags are what SL uses in its searches, btw.

I think the problem is, that many people call a sex bed "sexgen".
To many people think that sexgen is the keyword for all menu sex beds.

Best sample i think is coca cola.
The trademark is "CocaCola".
Other companys call there drink "Cola" or "Coke".

This is "merely a question of fact," as they say. If most people use it as a generic term, then there is no infringement. However, if the person asserting trademark rights can show that it's not generic, then it can be a valid trademark.



Coca-Cola owns both the "Coca-Cola" and the "Coke" marks. Other companies can't call their colas "Coke."

Ummm...I just pasted the first two lines which I thought was the relevant part in response to someone who said they couldn't find the entry. I would have thought this was the relevant dates rather than the filing date which would show the date of the last update.

FIRST USE: 20050101. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050101

LMAO

were those the actual dates? or just the dates they put in the application.

I was around before Sexgen - and sorry it wasnt 01/01/05.

It was closer to 06/01/05.

It was after Hiro did the posability stuff and was in response to that Idea.

You have done a wonderful job or critiquing everyone else’s Posts, YekaterinaStankova.

Do you have anything of value to add??




Piont? did you mean Point?

Or perhaps your comparing your product side by side with your competition because its better.


(Sorry not really my style to criticize another. It was getting on my nerves a bit. )

USPTO defines the filing date as: "This field contains the date when a complete application was received by the US Patent and Trademark Office, following receipt of all filing material requirements. Contingent upon registration, it constitutes date of constructive use (legal equivalent of actual use).".

If you still have doubts, you can look at the actual filing documents and they're dated June of this year.

As it turns out, the trademark isn't even registered yet, it's just at the filing stage:
I don't really see how someone could be protecting their trademark when they know it's being infringed upon, and they didn't bother to register it even then. I don't know what qualifies and what doesn't though, so it could very well be that a simple IM stating "don't do that, bad competitor" is enough .

"Passing off is a common law tort which can be used to enforce unregistered trademark rights. Passing off essentially occurs where the reputation of party A is misappropriated by party B, such that party B misrepresents this reputation and damages the goodwill of party A.

The law of passing off prevents one person from misrepresenting his or her goods or services as being the goods and services of the plaintiff, and also prevents one person from holding out his or her goods or services as having some association or connection with the plaintiff when this is not true.

A cause of action for passing off is a form of intellectual property enforcement against the unauthorised use of a mark which is considered to be similar to another party's registered or unregistered trademarks, particularly where an action for trademark infringement based on a registered trade mark is unlikely to be successful (due to the differences between the registered trademark and the unregistered mark)."

I know enough about intellectual property law to say only what I know to be true. If you have a specific question, I'd be happy to try to answer it. If I don't know something, I'll say "I don't know." I'm not going to just run off at the mouth about something I'm not sure about.

The value I see in what I'm saying is actual knowledge of how IP law works. I would hope that would help anyone posting here to understand the issues better.



Because snarking on a typo is the same as pointing out misconceptions about intellectual property law?



I don't understand what your point is. Shall I just keep my mouth shut then?

Federal and state trademark laws protect both registered and unregistered trademarks. So it rrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeaaaallllllllllllllyyyyyyyy doesn't matter.



Federal and state trademark laws provide for trademark claims with regard to both registered and unregistered trademarks. So, obviously, you aren't required to register a trademark in order to defend it.



In some cases, it might.



Yes, and additionally, passing off actions are provided for in the federal trademark statute. It's usually referred to as an action pursuant to Section 43 of the Lanham Act.