How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice. • Hacker News Board

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#51

Post by rhizome » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:27 PM UTC

aetimmes wrote: post #36

examancer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the outpouring of empathy in the language of responses from Moz. Too bad at the end the end you still decide to stick to your guns and assert there is "obvious confusion and brand dilution". Really?!? Are you really supporting the idea that potential customers of Moz, who go out in search of Moz and stumble on Doz, would confuse the two? Sure, they share two out of three letters, but they don't sound the same…

>Are you really supporting the idea that potential customers of Moz, who go out in search of Moz and stumble on Doz, would confuse the two? With a Hamming distance of one between the names, why wouldn't this be plausible?

I don't know the statistical term for it, but the letters are on opposite sides of a QWERTY keyboard.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#52

Post by crygin » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:27 PM UTC

andrewdumont wrote: post #8

Pulling over my comments on the matter from Inbound.org. Anji mentions a partnership in his post that I wanted to put come context behind. > When Anji reached out to us initially, they were CapSEO. At the time, I had no idea Doz existed, or that CapSEO was rebranding. As Anji and I talked, the discussion was around the functionality of CapSEO, which I saw as complementary. Later the discussion moved to their plans to…

> with no other option than the action we took

What a strange thing to lie about. Btw, how long after Capseo's purchase of doz.com did SEOmoz file the intent-to-use on MOZ? It's more of a moral question than a legal one.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#53

Post by just2n » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:29 PM UTC

I have decided to rename my seach engine company from SEARCHMoogel to Moogel (pronounced "moogle") and file a trademark lawsuit against Google for being too similar. I'll let you know how it goes. I think we have a winning argument, here.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#54

Post by cpeterso » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:29 PM UTC

akg_67 wrote: post #13

Very interesting. If Moz and (D)oz are close, how about Moz and Moz(illa)? Lets start out as SEOmoz and when we become big enough, we can change our name to Moz so that Mozilla doesn't come after us when we are small. As SEOMoz has changed the name to Moz, may be Doz want to rename to SEODoz. What a racket!

What did the "moz" in SEOmoz originally mean? It was a strange choice to begin with.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#55

Post by mindcrime » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:29 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #16

Wow, Moz does not come out looking good here. Doz and Moz are not the same word, don't mean the same thing (I'm not even sure either word actually means anything ) and are only similar in the most superficial possible way. Moz should quit fvcking around with lawyers and filings and trademarks and whatever legal bullshit and just focus on innovating and being better at what they do.

That said, I'm going to file an official trademark registration for our brand shortly. We've been using it for a couple of years and should be pretty safe, but just in case somebody comes along and tries to start something... A USPTO trademark application costs ~275.00 USD for one mark and one class of goods, so it's not a tremendous expense. Might as well go ahead and go for the extra protection of having a registered trademark... "better safe than sorry" right?

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#56

Post by dohertyjf » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:29 PM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #7

dohertyjf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Global Associate for Moz and I work for Distilled, who took over Moz's consulting business when they went fulltime in SAAS. edited because I was a jerk Next, doesn't matter when the domain was purchased. What matters is the date that the trademark, or the intent to use a trademark, was filed.

I never said that you denied it. I said that you failed to disclose it in your comment. My earlier comment was just a friendly reminder but since you went uppercase on me I'll add that you should know better because of the industry you work in.

Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification, Ben. Will add Global Associate at Moz to my profile here.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#57

Post by examancer » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:31 PM UTC

aetimmes wrote: post #36

examancer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the outpouring of empathy in the language of responses from Moz. Too bad at the end the end you still decide to stick to your guns and assert there is "obvious confusion and brand dilution". Really?!? Are you really supporting the idea that potential customers of Moz, who go out in search of Moz and stumble on Doz, would confuse the two? Sure, they share two out of three letters, but they don't sound the same…

>Are you really supporting the idea that potential customers of Moz, who go out in search of Moz and stumble on Doz, would confuse the two? With a Hamming distance of one between the names, why wouldn't this be plausible?

By that logic services like Hoogle (a haskell search engine) are even more likely to cause confusion with other services in the same arena (search). Yet, Google hasn't barked.

I just can't see a scenario in which a person is told about Moz, seeks them out, stumbles upon Doz, and thinks they found what they were looking for. The services may be complementary and even overlap on occasion, but even to a user in a hurry it should be painfully obvious they are not the same thing.

I don't think hamming distance provides a solid legal footing for arguing conflation of trademarks. Their phonetic difference is pretty large. The legal standard is generally based on an idiot in a hurry and I think the differences are large enough than even the biggest moron with no patience will know they are different.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#58

Post by unreal37 » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

scrozier wrote: post #40

I'm all for the little guy, and I know this must suck for CapSEO/Doz. But SEOmoz seems to me to have acted above board here. I think Doz erred, and suggest they rebrand and move on.

I don't think Doz erred. They went out, probably paid 5 digits for the doz.com domain name months ago, but didn't register it as a trademark. And then seomoz goes and rebrands last week and they are caught off guard.

If moz wants the doz.com domain, they should pay for it. Why should doz just give it up over such a weak claim?

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#59

Post by masklinn » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #50

ValentineC wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, as someone who's only heard about Moz/SEOmoz recently, I did think that they were related to Mozilla in some way. On the other hand, it could be trademark law that's screwed up, because I understand that there may be dilution at stake if they don't defend their trademark.

there may be dilution at stake if they don't defend their trademark I don't buy it. Give me an example of a company that lost trademark protection because they merely allowed another company with a similar name to exist and I'll eat my hat.

And it's not really a similar name. You can't even mistype moz to doz.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#60

Post by nathas » Fri, May 31, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

pseudonym wrote: post #43

nathas wrote: post #4

A very important snippet from the comments from Sarah Bird (COO of Moz) > So, I did what I would want someone to do for me. In January, I called him to give him a personal heads up that we had a problem, that the brand felt too close for us. I told him we had a registered intent-to-use, and that we were planning on launching soon, just like him. I asked him to use a different brand for his future product or that we w…

That actually makes me more disinclined to use Moz-- this isn't a snap-retort by an overeager in-house lawyer looking to earn their fee, this is the COO claiming that "Doz" is a trademark violation because it ends on "oz". It's flat-out depressing, and giving overt hints about "Change your name or we'll sue" ahead of time doesn't make this any better.

I just feel that shifts from a "we're going to legally bully you" to "cmon, we let you know".

If someone were to get a notice saying, "Hey, we're going to drop a bomb on you in 3 months. You might want to leave." and continues to live there stubbornly, then complains a bomb got dropped on them, whose fault is it? Clearly it doesn't mean you didn't get a bomb dropped on you, but it kind of nullifies your right to complain about it.