When Should Bloggers Register TradeMarks?
There have been quite a few major spats over the last year or so over trademarks including Apple Vs Apple, Apple (again) and Cisco arguing over who owned the rights to iPhone, and Google being blocked from using the Gmail name in Europe to name a few.
These arguments tend to involve big companies squaring up to each other. But, when should little guys like bloggers start thinking about registering tradenames? For instance, Google Video has just launched Blog Buzz, that showcases the videos from YouTube and Google Video that are discussed the most in the blogosphere. Some of you may have come across Blogg-Buzz! that was launched by my buddy JohnTP a few months ago. If JohnTP now cried foul and decided to go after Google for infringing his trademark and stealing his name, would he have a case?
I’m not a legal expert as although I get involved in a lot of legal negotiations at work, whenever the discussions move onto the boring parts of the agreement such as indemnities, warranties, IPR, assignment rights etc my eyes start to glaze over and I start thinking about what I’m going to have for lunch.
I bet that Google didn’t even check to see if there was already a service called Blog-Buzz or anything similar. Maybe they decided that because Blogg-Buzz as 2 Gs it was ok, but I don’t think that’s a strong argument as I’m sure if I setup a site called Gooogle (incidentally Google have registered this domain) within a few days I’d be subjected to the full force (and wrath) of the Google legal team.
Can anyone shed any light on this? For instance, what would hapapen if say I decided to setup www.engadgettv.com? Would I suddenly find AOL breathing down my neck? When should I think about registering my own domain as a trademark?
It would be interesting to know what protection is available for the little guys like us, or what steps up and coming bloggers should take just in case they get big in the future.
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Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 10 March 2007:
Hey Everton,
Hmmm…. I’ve had a couple of businesses before where we got trademarks, etc. I’ve also seen large companies break solid contracts and say “you’re a little guy, realistically you have no real practical recourse”.
Not to be a downer on this… but I think the short answer is that there’s very little protection for little guys against the big folks EVEN if you’ve right. You may be on solid ground if you trademark however. Otherwise not much luck.
The big guys like Google have staying power and lots of laywers on staff, who have nothing better to do than deal with your case. You simply don’t have the money and the bandwidth to fight it - unless of course it REEAALLLYYY matters. And in the end what are your goals?
You can be really sure AOL will be calling you very soon after setting up that domain - specifically the good folks at AOL in the legal department who have nothing better to do than work on YOU.
Of course sometimes you’re way to small for them to care. ORRR as a prominent blogger you may actually have quite a lot of PUBLIC PERCEPTION CLOUT to actually cause some sway… but legally I don’t think you’ve got much to work with. Only the “PR department”.
Have an awesome day!
Dan
Comment by Thilak on 10 March 2007:
This story is quite interesting, I bet JohnTP bought Blogg-Buzz.com because BlogBuzz or BloggBuzz was not available. Now, If John had a good popularity like Scoble or Matt Cutts, he would probably get some love from us (bloggers). But unfortunately that’s not the case.
Comment by Ashish Mohta on 10 March 2007:
This is one interesting thing i had been thinking about when i was drafting a a post on pharming, where misspel url is used for getting people feel like right place to get right info but actually thats a wrong place.
However in this case we really can’t do anything unless you have enough resources or money.There should be some copyright kind of thing which can make sure of these.Or best is buy those misspelled domain ro anything that looks same.A little costly but can be effective.
@Thilak: I guess he has love of many fans(925 readers is not less i guess), may be not as much as JC or problogger but people quite know him because of his work.And Bloggers did love BB, it might just take time.One cent from me…”neutrality is the best option thats played over the internet, just know th game”
Comment by Everton on 11 March 2007:
I think big companies have a duty to not abuse their position. My first online job in the UK was with the market leader who were way ahead everyone else. My boss always stressed to me that we needed to ensure that we weren’t seen as the ‘big brother of the internet’ by always being fair and never taking advantage of our position, and never giving the impression that nobody would be allowed to succeed unless they agreed to our terms.