Why Linden Lab support the illegal product ?

Hello.

I don't understand why, LL, remove all Hello Kitty product, or the Wonder Woman.
And when we report the products like Burberry, or from Mattel , they won't to remove them ?

Probably because Mattel and Burberry are not aware of it, or they consider it as a tribute or free advertising. My guess is that it needs a lawyer to have LL remove this content.

Does this mean my hello kitty jammies have disappeared from my inventory?

Why would you bother reporting them? Do you own the brand name Burberry? If not, why do you care? Sour grapes?

what about if the names changed to something like..... Hello Neko or...Hello Pussy?

What a great idea. They could have a scripted prim attachment. Your boy friend clicks the attachment.... and.... well.... Hello Pussy!

I know of one team who made excellent avatars of famous Marvel and DC characters but named them differently as 'He-Bat' or 'She-Bat' for instance while they were still recognisably Batman, Batwoman, Superman, The Silver Surfer et al. Sometime before the close of last year they were obliged to take most of their great products down. I say 'obliged' because I'm pretty sure they didn't remove 75% of their product line for the heck of it.

OooOooOoooooo

you guys said "Hello Pussy".

I've reported this thread.

Because if a competitor is getting away with using illegal trademarks, it's very hard to compete with them without using them too, which means you're taking the same risk. You shouldn't have to risk breaking the law in order to break into business.

No, sour Burberries.

I don't agree. If your product is good and it's marketed correctly you should not need to worry about what others are doing. If someone makes a kick-ass hat, I'm not going to refrain from buying it just because someone else makes a kick-ass hat that happens to have the Harley Davidson logo on it. I might buy both. It's not like people can only afford one hat. Ask Brenda how many pairs of shoes she owns.

Bullshytt.

Yumi, you're just parading another excuse for yourself. "I can't succeed because the Others are doing illegal stuff to get ahead."

Thousands of successful products in SL are sold every day without infringing on Real World trademarks. In fact, if I buy an SL product, I'd rather buy it from a creator who has a good reputation for quality *in SL*. I wouldn't cross the street for a free pair of SL shoes by Prada...but I'll shell out $L for something from J's or Bax Coen.

Agreed. I avoid everything that has even a whiff of a RL brand connection. I don't care if Nike themselves opened a store in SL, you couldn't give me any of their stuff.

One unfortunate consequence of this issue is the use of themes and characters for RP purposes. I love the Star Trek stuff in SL for instance, and if that all had to be taken down, it would really diminsh SL, at least for me.

Marvel and DC, but Marvel especially, are very strict about their characters. Marvel even sued City of Heroes because using the COH costume creator, Marvel employees were able to recreate Marvel heroes.

O.o

The only reason you "have to" risk breaking the law in order to "break into business" is because you CHOOSE to do so. Certainly there is no requirement that ANYone has to do so. You can get WRITTEN PERMISSION to sell someone else's IP, or you can MAKE YOUR OWN IP.

The OP is mad because his IP infringement was ganked, and someone else's wasn't. Poor beebee.

My response to the complaint would fall somewhere along this line:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbOtyWTRZ_g

Yep.

If you REALLY want to reproduce someone's IP in SL, then go ahead and do a little legwork to make it happen. Sure, some companies like Disney will emphatically refuse, but there are probably other companies , like Coca Cola that will allow it.

Star wars stuff, Red dwarf, Dr who, Star trek etc. These companies have not found SL or see it is not a problem. As said Marvel, Disney, and Barbies Mattel, are very protective of their copyrights and patents and reputation. So no complaints then Linden will most likely not do anything.

(I remember the hero woman costume, almost bought it, it cost half the price of the official one. A few weeks later it was pulled, Copyright violation it said). The name wonder woman is copyrighted, The exact costume is copyrighted but the eagle is copyrighted separately, They could have gotten away with it by changing it more. Stars and stripes are not copyrighted!


To protect your invention you need to get many copyrights and patents, parts, appearance, names even making changes in it and copyrighting that so it covers slight changes.


PS lots of barbie stuff in SL so Mattel has not found SL yet maybe. Problem is the name Barbie cannot be copyrighted, neither can a SL doll face. If one could make a SL barbie that is exactly like a real Barbie face and call it barbie doll then I am sure it would get Mattel's attention.


For those making stuff that is violating copyrights or patents, just remember it could catch up to you anytime. It has been found in court that SL money is or was "real Money" the (gambling problem) so products sold In SL are "taking away" real money from those who hold the patents and copyrights for them! Just remember that!

That's not quite what I mean. What I mean is that, suppose somebody is selling a Spider-Man avatar. It is going to be very difficult for anyone's own superhero IP to compete with that. I mean, people might just search for "spider-man" (or "na'vi" or similar) without seeing any in-world advertising, just because they've heard of it from RL. No resident IP can have that ability, and even if it can be overcome via marketing, marketing costs money which the IP infringer may be able to get away without paying.

Now, the competitor can sell a Spider-Man avatar too.. but that puts them at the same risk of being shut down or losing content. So they have an awkward choice. They can either sell their avatar as Spider-Man and be breaking the law, or sell it with a non-infringing name and have to market harder for far fewer sales. That isn't acceptable. The penalties for breaking the law should always be effective and harsh enough that it's never worth breaking the law as a tradeoff.

The usual argument people have is that "Marvel could have given just that one person permission, and then it would be just as unfair". Yes, but it wouldn't be illegal. It probably wouldn't be unfair either, since Marvel is likely to be charging them for the privelege, or at least asking for a percentage of the profits.

Marvel will be even more strict in the future since they are now owned by Disney.

Would not be unfair! But Marvel is not going to give permission without money if they do it is "fair" they own it! So no one should be selling Spiderman avatar or spider man anything. I do not know if the name Spiderman is copyrighted or trademarked but if it is then anything with this is no legal.


So realize your risk or stop. I understand it is not "Fair" that you will not sell spiderman avatar but others do. But you could sell a man spider or webman or spider guy avatar, as long as the costume does not like like spidermans! Nothing wrong with using spiderman in the search key, maybe.

You could always tell Marvel about the copyright violations in SL and see what happens!

It is only "difficult" because that someone is getting free advertising from the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS spent in popularizing that IP. They most certainly didn't have a hand in making it popular; they are just cashing in on the popularity for which someone else spent bank.

As for the rest, resident IP most certainly CAN attain a large following; there are MANY excellent creators all over the grid who have popularized their products in this world, including their own fantasy/sci-fi/superhero characters. They aren't going to have the same level of recognition in RL until they've made the effort to attain that level of recognition, but that does NOT mean that they are incapable of competing against RL IP properties here in SL. Not the least of the reasons being that buying "spider-man" branded products does not exclude buying any other similar category/genre products. In many cases, people will buy both.

To me, that is simply another reason to stop people competing unfairly via IP infringement.

Either they haven't noticed or perhaps they just don't see it as much of a problem, at least now. Viacom/Paramount, for example was pretty protective of Star Trek in the 90's, but CBS/Paramount seems to be a bit more stand offish, maybe allowing a certain bit of fandom, or perhaps taking the example from Coke and thinking that as long as it isn't negative it's good publicity, which in truth I think it is. Since SL is still a niche and no one is making any really big money off the stuff, they aren't bothering. But as SL becomes More predictable (tm) perhaps there will be more smackdowns from the Lab.

As an aside, I find it amusingly ironic that CBS is now the owner of The Star Trek Franchise. WhenGene roddenberry first approach them with the idea, they turned him down in favor of what they thought was going to be THE Sci Show for the ages....Lost in Space. NBC wouldn't have taken the show in either, if it weren't for the help of Lucille Ball and Desilu.