Linden Lab tries to explain the new trademark policy again… and fails..
by Christian Scholz on April 18, 2008
Linden Lab tried to clarify again what is and what isn’t allow regarding the use of the term Second Life because of all the confusion and protests going on.
Fact is though that I already infringened their policy because I didn’t put a TM sign behind the first use of this term.
Fact is also that it this new policy does not make more sense by explaining it more. Look at the comments on the blog to see that people are still pissed.
Fact is that people who invested quite a lot of time and maybe money on promoting their formerly legal domain names (SEO etc.) have to change names now losing all that.
Fact is that it will not help Linden Lab to control their message.
Fact is that most people will not comply to those rules (e.g. putting a TM on the first mention).
Fact is that the TOS will not be changed to remove the ban clause for infringing their trademark.
For me it stays a bad move regarding marketing and moral issues.
3 comments
[...] covered the problems Linden Lab is creating by enforcing a more strict Trademark Policy earlier but the topic strikes back from another area: Last week the [...]
by The annoyances of trademark law — mrtopf.de on 30.4.2008 at 11:46. #
Hi Christian,
i agree with you and we are observing the current situation. It's really a pain and you are fully right with your moral issues. For replacing Second Life with Second Life® i've installed a wordpress-plugin. That's not the problem. The pain are the investigation in the domain name and all the SEO work behind ….
regards,
Andy from SLTalk
by Andreas Mertens on 30.4.2008 at 15:28. #
[...] grace period of trademark use has expired. If you follow this blog you might know that Linden Lab changed their trademark policy to the worst they can do and disallowed their fans to use the name of “their world” (as [...]
by Second Life’s sad birthday desaster — mrtopf.de on 23.6.2008 at 22:10. #