Over at ZenHabits, a insanely popular blog with an Alex Ranking of 15K , Leo Babauta, the author talked about what appears to be the privatization of the English language through trademark and copyrights.
This is an important article for all domainers to read.
Ordinary words, terms and phrases long used in the English language are now the subject of trademarks, copyrights and other claims of ownership causing problems for domainers, authors and bloggers.
The blog post discusses that the author received a letter from a law firm after he wrote the words “feel the fear and do it anyway” in a previous post. The law firm claimed that the phrases was the title of of of their client’s books.
“The lawyers asked me to insert the (R) symbol after the phrase, in my post, and add this sentence: “This is the registered trademark of Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. and is used with her permission.”
The blogger wrote:
“””I find it unbelievable that a common phrase (that was used way before it was the title of any book) can be trademarked. We’re not talking about the names of products … we’re talking about the English language. You know, the words many of us use for such things as … talking, and writing, and general communication? Perhaps I’m a little behind the times, but is it really possible to claim whole chunks of the language, and force people to get permission to use the language, just in everyday speech?
What if this were taken to an extreme? What if some billionaire (say, Bill Gates) decided to start trademarking thousands and thousands of phrases, so that he could charge us for each use, or so that we’d have to link back to the Microsoft homepage with each reference? The language, in this scenario, could be entirely privatized if we allow this sort of thing.””””
Well Mr. Babauta welcome to the domain world.
Over hear we already know what you are just learning, that the english language is becoming quickly owned not by one guy like Bill Gates but by millions of various trademarked on one words, commonly used phrases, almost every combination of two and three letters, everything.
Even the word “trademark” is trademarked.
The problem Mr. Babauta demonstrates is the effect of these trademarks in the non-domaining world. Authors and bloggers can be subjected to attorney letters and legal fees by using a trademarked phrases in the coming years.
However in the domain world this problem has been around a while and is only to get worse.
As someone who recently lost a UDRP (now appealing) on domain of a term commonly used in the English language for a very long time, smoothmove.com, this problem is going to only grow in future years, for bloggers and authors but exponentially for domainers.
If someone owns a trademark or copyright they should vigorously defend the trademark in all situations where they see a use. However its seems that most of these “trademark holders” only have eyes for the domain. So there can be hundreds of businesses using the same “trademark” infringing term like there was in the case of my domain, the trademark holder takes no action against any of these other businesses.
The domain is the prize.
As we own domains.
So expect many more C&D’s. UDRP, lawsuits and worse.
What’s worse you ask.
The “Uniform Rapid Suspension”
You probably never heard about it, but it’s coming.
Its coming and we will tell you about it tomorrow and your going to wish for the good old days of the UDRP.
Indeed, even the Florida government is involved in this cycle. The trademarked MyFlorida, as it is only their, and not my, and try to sue everyone, including MyFlorida.de…
Simp.ly, unbelievable.
I’ve read the original blog and have to say firstly that threats like that stink. Apart from that, it sounds like the usage of the mark was not infringing in the area that it was registered.
Secondly, thanks for introducing me to a great blog.
Pommy
One could have foreseen this years ago. Let’s say some of my ideas have had global reach, since 1994 I “registered” phrases that I believe were my tag lines. Could I have global rights to protect them? Local Voice, Global Choice” was registered as soon as I though of it back in Dec. 1999 not because I wanted to put a website on it but because I wanted to use a global registry viewed by billions to stake a claim at some “intellectual property” that I was using for Traveler.com. Was I going to force people not to use it? Not sure, but I believed that I had better protect myself by getting a time/date stamp on the idea.
Since we are becoming a global economey we are going to be bumping up against a lot of people wanting what we have and want to use to better our lives. Unless there is some kind of a global statute of limitations we are going to be chopping up the same pieces in courts around the world. This is something ICANN needs to get its head around. Another topic that has the same problem are IDNs.
As an example; if someone built a business with global reach for 15
years like Hollywood.com and others were allowed to register
Hollywood.com in other dialects, wouldn’t that harm both the owner of
Hollywood.com and those that expected to find the original site when
typing it in their browsers? Should there really be hundreds of
Hollywood.com, one for each dialect? Doesn’t is harm the owner of
Hollywood.com if it is diluted in such a way? He or she should have
rights to their business that has been defined for 15 years around the
globe. The public would also be confused if they expected to visit the
address but was led to a different site with differing content. There
should be one Hollywood.com in any dialect.
This will be a problem for businesses that have had a web presence
built around a domain name as their brand and as the new IDNs get
built out. I expect there will likewise be future turf battles over first claim rights. This is something that should also have been foreseen but was not.
.Com is international, not all phrases and words used in dot com are english. The only thing that is getting worse is irrational people think they OWN things that are impossible to own. You cannot own a word. It should be impossible to own a fucking word, but ONLY IN AMERICA can some dipshit own a word. Luckily if you fake your whois and say you live in CHINA, where laws actually make sense *strange I kn0w* you can avoid lawyers like David Steel (who is a prat.)
So instead of living in fear of legal woes, just use fake whois. If you lose a UDRP, fight it. Make as much trouble as you can for these bottom dwelling lawyers, and soon to be dead companies. Remember Asprin in the 1920’s? It was a trademark… Now all pain relivers are called Asprin, because it became a generic term. Everything is a generic term, and NO THOUGHT IS ORIGINAL. Really WINDOWS? Really CountryWide? Really SmoothMove? People trademark their lastname FFS, and expect other people with the same last name to surrender their rights? SURRENDER YOUR RIGHTS? Don’t give in to America. It is a disease of corporate scum.
@ Michael Castello
re your example of Hollywood.com
Yes it’s sure going to be interesting if the term was not generic and had a trademark etc, then sure I agree with you.
But generic terms such as Hollywood in other languages & scripts will be open season with no prior rights to the ascii owner.
Lets face it, there would be little point in introducing IDN if on day 1, the equivalent translations of the current 80 million registered English .coms were handed over in all 350 languages to the English owner.
Guys
You are also forgetting about the trademarks of other countries. I believe it was a German trademark on which Lufthansa relied on to get the UDRP for LH.com.
If you consider that almost every word, phrases, two and three letter combination is trademarked in the US and then take into account just the G-20 nations, that’s a lot of legal paperwork flying around.
I believe the most efficient, fair, and cost effective trademarking registration system and trademark exchange, without the need for trademark agents and lawsuits is the domain name industry. Think About it
The law works pretty good around TMs, IMHO. It’s just that domainers are at the edge of the envelope when playing 3D chess with words. ‘That’s the business we’re in’, so expect issues.
Besides, demographics and fool US-haters will result in the lack of free speech and available words far sooner than we’ll ever trademark/monetize our language.
Especially, lawyers like Gerry York who spam several times a day and threaten to take your domain away.
These guys should be just blocked and locked.