Trademark infringement and cheap knockoffs

craig has a motion capture system??? well I must ask him how that works, interesting to know
we talked a lot about how he makes his stuff and he never mentioned that

*watches for him to log in so I can ask him how the motion capture thing works*
Also did not get the impression he is a professional animator (or was not until SL came along LOL)

Well to be really fair you dont get 50 sets of sex balls from Bits and Bobs all set up in a nice menu driven system for 6000L.

hmm I thought I read that somewhere else as well... wonder why she (assuming it is a she LOL) claimed it was 3 years....

so there we have it....

SEXGEN does not equal BEST PRODUCT..... thats down to personal preference, saying that everyone else product is crap is a little unfair. They CANT state that there product is a sexgen but you cant stop them using it as a search word. I am certain if you search for "Coke" on the web, you will get everybrand of cola known to man. SexGen is in common language now ....same as camp master. Those that look for an authentic bed will know how to find it but maybe not prepapred to pay for the higher cost item.... so unless you can IP a bed or a ball your going to run into copies...after all stroker had to get his ideas from somewhere too ... hes just better at it.

you don't?!?! damn I need to talk to craig LOL he needs to do that now!

(sorry messing around)

This whole ordeal is so out of hand it is silly. People use name dropping all the time in ads to draw attention. Now are they naming their product sexgen, then that would be different.

PS for the record I do not consider sexgen beds the best there is...

yes thats the issue they ARE calling their product "sexgen" in some cases.

in others they are adding "sexgen" to their search keywords.

Perhaps you have good reasons for hiding your real identity here. But I'm pretty sure that any real company that tried to defend their trademarks using the courts, and yet refused to identify themselves, would get a resounding belly laugh.

ah then if they are naming it sexgen then I would say no no bad idea

but the example provided showed sexgen as a search word.

I dunno about most people but when it comes to search words, I do not always assume the place has that specific product there.

If something doesn't have the name on it then I do not assume it is hat specific product.

(besides sexgen is sort of a widely used acronym in SL now, for sex generating devices, at least that is the impression I have gotten)

Yes that is exactly the problem, people are buying this cheap MLB starter kit and naming there bed a sexgen and trying to sell it as a sexgen..

They are trying to sell it by putting sexgen in there search and selling it through Sl affiliated web sights... so people are buying what they think is a sexgen, then we have to tell them they where cheated..

what most of the informed people here are forgetting is that new users don't know the diffrance.. they are told " wow this sexgen rocks" and they do a search and end up buying a knockoff because it has the sexgen name on it.

...

*hugs her devPose and wanders back out*

well now
my question to you is ....
what exactly do you think will be accomplished by posting about it here in the forums?

keep in mind majority of the new players most likely do not go to the forums...

the reason i pointed this out here was because there are educated people who know the rules and as i pointed out in the first post, this is not just about sexgen.. people are doing this with allot of Sl companies. What i would love is if LL did something about it before more lawyers have to get involved, as that is not likely to happen without a restraining order it would be good if there was some other way to stop people from putting brand names on there cheap knockoffs.. and to stop them from advertising there knockoffs with the brand name in there search. IF you want to put sex gen like system, or the like thats fine, but putting just another companies name in your search to trick people into buying a knockoff needs to stop before Sl ends up on court tv.

Nova, it'd be trademark infringement if your competition called their bed a Sexgen bed.

Just using your mark in a search list, though, isn't infringement or misleading advertising (IMO). The thinking here is "I want to attract customers to see my MLB beds. Customers in the market for this type of product have heard about Sexgen beds. I don't sell those, but I *do* want my shop to come up when somebody uses "sexgen" in a search. So I'll add that word to the search terms list."

Take heart, though. This strategy can backfire. Let's say I'm searching for a Sexgen bed. Store XYZ comes up in my search and I TP right on over. I look around, and see that while they are selling MLB beds, they don't carry the Sexgen product that I *really* want. I TP away in frustration.

UK citizens over a certain age might remember a certain lawnmower advert, with the cathc-phrase, "It's a lot less bovver than a hovver."

At least within the UK, it is illegal to mention a competitor's product in any way that can be construed as negative advertising.

Of course, far more fundamental advertising standards laws are routinely broken in SL daily.

It certainly used to be - although the number of adverts we see these days which do, makes me wonder if that law has gone away.

I wish it applied to political party adverts too

Matthew

FYI., in the US, filing for a trademark is not required. The important factor is *if* someone claims ownership of a trademark, have they been using the trademark symbol on their products and ads and such, and have they been actively defending against infringement of the trademark. I don't know whether either or both of these criteria are true in this case, but judging the situation simply by the date in which they filed for a trademark isn't all that a court would consider.

More info is available at the USPTO website:

http://www.uspto.gov/go/tac/doc/basic/register.htm

I was under the impression that in order to go to court it would have been in Stroker's best interest that the paperwork for the trademark application be filed, which is why you see the paperwork dated just days before the court paperwork was filed. I'm sure his lawyer has a reason for it, I'm not one...so this is a guess.

I don't think it's violating trademark if you advertise SexGen in your Classifieds but do not carry them. Now making a sexbed and calling it a SexGen is a violation. Making a sexbed and saying it's Similar to SexGen" I don't think is. I'm not saying it's right- I LOATHE looking at classifieds that place well known SL business names in their ad just to get hits, but such is life. I do my part and won't shop at a place that does that in their classified ads.

Just for the record, it's MLP, not MLB (but then it's not trademarked, so probably nobody will be going to court over the error). It's a nice little open source scripting project... see Miffy Fluffy's profile picks for where to pick up the latest release. The scripts have some limitations, perhaps notably the limit of two simultaneous poseballs. Some folks have already customized MLP a bit--Paul Lobo comes to mind. (Just in passing, nobody could mistake Paul's anims embedded in an MLP bed for a "cheap ripoff" of anything... but nobody's said that, either.)

I've noticed a lot of fresh animation talent in-world lately, so... it would be kinda unfortunate to be limited to a single animator.

So, anyway, if one already has a bunch of nice couple or single poseball sets from Craig or Paul or elsewhere, one can put the anims into a free MLP base and get the best of both worlds. Although, one might expect to spend a bit of time with a partner, getting the locations just right--which, in fact, may be almost as entertaining as the anims themselves.

Agreed, I don't think of the BRAND SexGen anymore, I think of the TYPE of bed... i.e. it's got lots of animations, etc.

Sort of like Xerox, Kleenex, Q-Tip, Band-Aid, etc. Stroker should be happy, proud, and flattered that "SexGen" has moved into the lexicon of SL society. He's firmly entrenched in the subconscious of us all.

I keep hearing Stroker Applyed for a trademark "SexGen" But was it even approved? Anyone can Apply to have whatever they want trademarked but did he pay for it ? Was it approved ? was the application filed successfully? maybe some company in World already owns that name besides Storker? I am just wondering

Poser animations are made for a certain 3D model. It's already questionable if an animations made for DAZ3D's Victoria 2 will still work with their Victoria 3, not to speak of a completely different model. The SL toons have less joints than these high polygon models and animations translate pretty bad. The work needed to repair an animation is the same as creating a new one from scratch.

As for trademarks: there are registered and unregistered trademarks. Both are legally protected. All it needs to create a trademark is to establish a market presence.

Not in a lot of cases. As little as a day after anims were put in SL, freebie packs of almost every included poser anim were floating around SL. SL just ignores joints that it doesn't have.

Are you sure?

Every animation I've ever tried to upload has required EXTENSIVE tweaking to avoid the dreaded "Unable to initialise motion.."

I dunno, I've never tried it - but like I say, I think it might not be true in all cases. Canned poser anims were available in freebie boxes within hours of animations being put in.