Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

rudebaguette.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 164 posts

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#151

Post by MartinCron »

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…

Good list, but you forgot legendary artist Mos Def.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#152

Post by mindcrime »

gingerlime wrote: post #148
mindcrime wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good point. Maybe we should take an aggressive stance and file a pre-emptive lawsuit!

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#155

Post by MichelleRobbins »

First use (actual use, not intent to use) in commerce matters. A lot. And it seems like Doz has that. Also, they already own their mark (they did register it, seems there's confusion on that in this thread too). I know a guy that deals in this kind of thing literally every day - and after reviewing the marks and filings at uspto he says it's a pretty long shot that Moz will get the Doz mark removed. (actually he said "no way will Doz lose their mark") So unless those first use facts aren't actual facts....well I reckon we'll all wait and see how this plays out.

Someone somewhere in this thread asked for an example of a similar situation. I can personally speak to that. Long ago and far away I worked at a software company and we developed a web based traffic analytics platform - pre webtrends even! Anyhoo we didn't register the mark for it (young!) and we were contacted by someone who was trying to get their mark (same exact product name, similar functionality - a web traffic analytics program) registered. They told us we had to stop using the name, blah blah blah because they owned the trademark. Well, they actually didn't - yet. And we had first use in commerce. So we opposed their application, it was denied, we filed ours (which they of course opposed), but we ultimately owned the mark. Solely because of first use in commerce.

I don't know every detail of this unfortunate scenario, but from what I've read here and on the blog post, it's not at all a slam dunk for Moz. And it's unfortunate that they, and the Doz folks are having to spend time, energy and money on this.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#156

Post by eridius »

gscott wrote: post #138
eridius wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In January their website still had "Marketing Analytics" as the featured item that was coming soon. The poor Doz guy still had no idea what was going on and thought it was different enough. Her warning wasn't very specific and he thought he was in good shape. This is really a bait and switch on him. http://web.archive.org/web/20130122024159/http://moz.com/

How is this bait and switch? The COO of SEOmoz told them that they were going to have a conflict. Now they have a conflict. It seems like it's exactly what was advertised on the packaging.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#157

Post by faaaah »

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…

Opera didn't take back their lawyer letter. They settled out of court. If there hadn't been a settlement they would still have been going to court.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#158

Post by faaaah »

lingben wrote: post #122
andrewdumont wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Seems you are the one with the straw man, since he didn't say anyone forced them to do something.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#159

Post by killerpopiller »

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.

Get your hat ready, there is one example: the german newspaper TAZ "die tageszeitung" used it's paw logo since 1979 but never trademarked it. It is after all a libertarian newspaper. The outdoor clothes company Jack Wolfskin secured it's look alike logo in 1982 and successfukky forbade the TAZ to use it's logo on merchandising.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#160

Post by lingben »

faaaah wrote: post #158
lingben wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Seems you are the one with the straw man, since he didn't say anyone forced them to do something.

"we viewed as our only course of action"
Post reply on HN