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How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

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Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#121

Post by Bill_Dimm »

masklinn wrote: post #72
Bill_Dimm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized...

Operative section of GP's comment: > because they merely allowed another company with a similar name to exist reason for genericization: > lost legal protection as trademarks by becoming the common name of the relevant product or service

I'm not sure I see your point. It's a two step process (IANAL): 1) fail to defend your trademark, 2) broad usage becomes popular, so you lose your mark. Sure, you may not lose your mark without (2), but you don't get to (2) without (1) and your only opportunity to stop the process of losing your mark is at (1).

So, MartinCron's claim is perhaps not invalidated by the list, since those names have the additional property of having become popular, but how does that technicality translate to whether or not SEOMoz needed to take action? Is the idea that it is OK for SEOMoz to do nothing under the assumption that Doz will never become popular?

By the way, I'm in no way siding with SEOMoz here -- I don't think it's clear that they deserved to get that mark (with the Mozilla confusion) in the first place, or that Doz is confusingly similar, but if they feel it is confusingly similar I don't see how you can argue that they can sit back and do nothing without having a risk of losing the mark.

Edit: Or, is your point perhaps that "Doz" and "Moz" are different words, so even popularization of "Doz" would not cause the "Moz" mark to be diluted?

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#122

Post by lingben »

andrewdumont wrote: post #81
rajahafify wrote: post #67

Its funny to see Moz employee defending their company. This is HN. Most people here is highly opinionated and most has made up their mind. Nothing you say can ever justify what your company did. Just do what Opera did and take back your lawyer letter. Don't make this mess any bigger and you'd do fine. If you want, you can prove that Moz can do SEO better than Doz. SEO is irrelevant these days though. Product is what…

I want people to understand the why, that's why I'm here. My goal isn't to convince people to change their mind. The truth of the matter is that we were put into a difficult position, and with the information we had, this was what we viewed as our only course of action.

this is a straw-man argument, no one 'forced' you to do anything, a decision was made and it was the wrong one

now you have two choices, double down or retract and learn from the mistake

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#124

Post by jot »

Disclaimer: I once paid for three months of SEOMoz

How different would this thread be if it were Google, Microsoft, Salesforce or some billion dollar company that decided to launch an Internet marketing brand at Doz.com?

SEOMoz's openness has helped dozens of startups with posts like this: http://moz.com/blog/mozs-18-million-venture-financing-our-st... You can't get much nicer than that to your competitors short of giving them money. IIRC the deck included there, from over a year ago, hints at future use of the Moz brand too.

Just because they're bigger than the company behind Doz.com doesn't mean we have to jump to the conclusion that they are the bad guys here. Their lawyer even went to the unnecessary trouble of offering to help doz.com which might have meant financially given a more dignified response.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#126

Post by rajahafify »

eridius wrote: post #105
mindcrime wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually are quite similar words Only in that they both end with "oz" and sound nothing alike, don't share any common meaning, and have no other obvious connection. Personally, I don't see how anybody could ever confuse those two words. Don't forget, trademark law is such that you have to protect your trademark or you lose it. If there's any risk at all of infringement, you have to go after it. "any" risk? OK, g…

Only in that they both end with "oz" and sound nothing alike, don't share any common meaning, and have no other obvious connection. Personally, I don't see how anybody could ever confuse those two words. Right, because everybody has perfect memory of everything they've heard in the past. No wait, it's actually quite the opposite. People have crappy memory, especially for things they're not already familiar with. Neit…

I'd worry about making my fogbeam product better then fogdeam's. If it has to eat fog and shoot laser beam, that's what I'd do.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#127

Post by lingben »

qeorge wrote: post #90
MartinCron wrote: post #18

There's a particular irony that the Moz folks think that the Doz name is too similar to be allowed, when they're using an abbreviation for Mozilla that has been around for years and years.

Its intentional too. Rand specifically choose the name SEOMoz to benefit from the brand confusion. From the horse's mouth (Mixergy interview): "Andrew: What does SEOmoz mean? Rand: When we started up, we were looking for a name that was short. That had the word SEO in there so that people would know what the blog was about. And, I was a big fan of the Mozilla Foundation, with DMoz and ChefMoz. What was the other ones…

Not only that but just recently them moved from SEOmoz which is arguably more different from Mozilla to MOZ which is just a shortened form of Mozilla

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#129

Post by eridius »

gscott wrote: post #112
eridius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually are quite similar words, for companies which it seems are engaged in the exact same business. I can easily imagine how someone, not familiar with either company, might hear of Moz and, later, mistakenly believe that the company they heard about was Doz (or vice versa). Don't forget, trademark law is such that you have to protect your trademark or you lose it. If there's any risk at all of infringement,…

http://web.archive.org/web/20121207022623/http://moz.com/ While SeoMoz was promoting Marketing Analytics on this domain name there was nothing about moving all of their services to it. It seems to me that Doz has a reasonable chance (25% maybe) against the giant Moz. I would fight it! There is no way the DOZ guy could predict a domain name shift for Seomoz.com. I visit Woz.com occasionally to see what Woz is up to. I…

According to another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800161), Sarah Bird notified Doz of the issue way back in January. So yes I think Doz could indeed predict that SEOmoz was going to become Moz.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#130

Post by jennita »

dohertyjf wrote: post #28
jennita wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the name. Doz in and of itself has no meaning similar to Moz. The issue is the combination of name + tool focus.

Jen you might want to disclose that you work for Moz :-) Full disclosure: I'm Jen's friend.

Hah sorry about that. I've been open in this thread that I work there, should have mentioned it again. :)
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