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How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

rudebaguette.com

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Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#141

Post by humain2 »

eridius wrote: post #129
gscott wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to another comment http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/05/31/why-trademarks-are-im... Anji Ismail nofied :

1. Capseo bought DOZ.com back in April 2011 and Capseo has been selling Online Marketing since September 2009. So it was just a matter of time that we launch DOZ.com.

2. We didn’t fill in December 2012 as you said, but March 12, 2012. (cf. USPTO)

3. DOZ is not an inbound marketing software

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#142

Post by [deleted] »

cpeterso wrote: post #54
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.

[deleted]

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#143

Post by Bill_Dimm »

masklinn wrote: post #131
Bill_Dimm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proper…

> 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). No, that's not how marks become genericized. Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category…

Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company.

Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))? Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search") without a competitor having encroached upon it. If Microsoft ran "Use Bing to google what you are looking for" ads and Google didn't protest, would a court really give that no weight (as an admission that Google had accepted it being generic) if Google brought a trademark case against some other party in the future?

Of course, Doz and Moz are different words, and that may be a critical point.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#144

Post by masklinn »

Bill_Dimm wrote: post #143
masklinn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). No, that's not how marks become genericized. Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category…

Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company. Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))? Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search") without a competitor having encroach…

> Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))?

Maybe, but I don't know of any occurrence of that.

> Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search")

As far as I know, that's what happened every single time so far.

> If Microsoft ran "Use Bing to google what you are looking for" ads and Google didn't protest, would a court really give that no weight (as an admission that Google had accepted it being generic) if Google brought a trademark case against some other party in the future?

No but that's a very different case, that'd be Microsoft very specifically using it as a genericized mark which is a very different case than trademark dilution or confusion or whatever moz argues they're suffering from.

(and Google could actually do that to themselves by talking about googling stuff ("Escalator" was originally a mark of Otis, but the way Otis used them in their ads e.g. explaining that they offered "the latest in elevator and escalator design" made the trademark office conclude that they used it generically and scrap the mark))

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#145

Post by jack-r-abbit »

Bill_Dimm wrote: post #143
masklinn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). No, that's not how marks become genericized. Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category…

Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company. Wouldn't that be facilitated by consumers seeing other companies/products in the category using the same/similar name (hence my (1))? Admittedly, consumers may spontaneously expand the meaning of a word (e.g. "google" as a verb for "to search") without a competitor having encroach…

I don't think Kleenex got generalized because other tissue companies named themselves Fleenex and Gleenex. Or Band-aid because of Land-aid and Gland-aid. They became generalized because they were popular in their category and then any old knock-off (what ever the name) was the same to consumers.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#146

Post by MartinCron »

Bill_Dimm wrote: post #121
masklinn wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proper…

That's a lot of very torturous reasoning there. I just thought I would point that out.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#148

Post by gingerlime »

mindcrime wrote: post #95
masklinn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when does "defending your trademark" means using legal bullying against people with marks somewhat similar from afar in the fog if you're legally blind?

I object to your use of the word "fog" above. That is confusingly similar to our trademarked term "Fogbeam". Expect to hear from our attorneys soon.

Hope you don't get in trouble with fog creek. It sounds kinda the same and there's the word software on both your homepages.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#149

Post by MartinCron »

Domenic_S wrote: post #88
andrewdumont wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a fear, it's a legal obligation. If we don't protect our trademark in instances like this, where we are aware of infringement, we can be legally estopped from protecting our trademark in future cases.

Has this ever been tested in court? Interested to see a case where this has actually happened.

Interested to see a case where this has actually happened

Surely if this is as dangerous as people are insisting, there must be all sorts of instructive example cases. It's not like rational people would get into a fearful panic about something overblown.

I would expand on this further, but I'm already late to my Friday afternoon satanic ritual murder party. It's my turn to bring the Judas Priest tapes.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#150

Post by MartinCron »

BrianEatWorld wrote: post #73
MartinCron wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't give an example of one being lost, but thats the same reasoning Ford used for going after Ferrari last year. Whats worse is that wasn't even a real car, the F-150 Italia was their F1 chassis. A bit silly given Ford's F-150 is a midsize truck.

There's also strong precedent of this not being a problem. Saturn, Lexus, and Lincoln all sold passenger cars with "LS" in the name.

I'm even more likely to mistake a Lincoln for a Lexus than a Ferrari for a Ford, but somehow we managed.

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