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

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#131

Post by masklinn » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

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…

> 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 rather than as a specific product/line/company. Defending your trademark in court doesn't actually help against genericization, there's no step 1 then step 2 there's only step 2. Step 1 is irrelevant.

> Is the idea that it is OK for SEOMoz to do nothing under the assumption that Doz will never become popular?

If "doz" became genericized, Doz would lose its mark, not moz.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#132

Post by jennita » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

seodoz wrote: post #49

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.

Time to take rand's cheesy dick out of your mouth.

aren't you pleasant

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#133

Post by dohertyjf » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:30 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #116

eridius wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If someone else launched a company "Fogdeam", which sold similar software to yours, surely you'd go after them. I don't know for sure that we would. But I'd argue that, being a longer word, you get more confusion with the one character change, since any one character changes a smaller percentage of the overall word. The position of the character definitely matters to. For example, in your "fogdeam" case, I'd say it's…

Out of curiousity, what if they did the same thing as you, or a very similar thing? If you serve scientists with lasers (how Austin Powers of you), and they serve scientists with lasers, what would you do?

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#134

Post by MartinCron » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:39 PM UTC

andrewdumont wrote: post #62

MartinCron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's obvious confusion and brand dilution of Moz that can come as a result, and it's our duty to protect our trademark I just can't agree with this assertion. There is not a legitimate fear that you're going to lose trademark protection just because someone is using a similar (but obviously different) name. This isn't the same thing as Xerox or Kleenex turning into a general noun, this is just shameful bullying.

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.

Infringement? What?

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#135

Post by masklinn » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:39 PM UTC

lingben wrote: post #127

qeorge wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And has been used as such by mozilla for years: it's their official vendor prefix for CSS properties their official vendor prefix for non-standard javascript APIs (either draft standards or proprietary extensions, such as Firefox OS APIs):

* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/M...

* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MozActivity

* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mo...

* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requ...

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#136

Post by masklinn » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:41 PM UTC

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.

It's Mozilla's "moz". Quite literally: http://moz.com/blog/what-does-the-moz-in-seomoz-mean

(the "moz" in DMOZ comes from mozilla through its original domain: Directory.MOZilla.org)

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#137

Post by davemel37 » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:49 PM UTC

I wonder if there is precident with Three Letter Trademarks, where almost any variation can sound similar. (perhaps this is an argument for a longer brand name that Three letters.)

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#138

Post by gscott » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:55 PM UTC

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.

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/

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#139

Post by mindcrime » Fri, May 31, 2013, 7:59 PM UTC

dohertyjf wrote: post #133

mindcrime wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone else launched a company "Fogdeam", which sold similar software to yours, surely you'd go after them. I don't know for sure that we would. But I'd argue that, being a longer word, you get more confusion with the one character change, since any one character changes a smaller percentage of the overall word. The position of the character definitely matters to. For example, in your "fogdeam" case, I'd say it's…

Out of curiousity, what if they did the same thing as you, or a very similar thing? If you serve scientists with lasers (how Austin Powers of you), and they serve scientists with lasers, what would you do?

Ya know, it's hard to say without actually being in that exact situation. I won't say we would never invoke trademark law, but I will just say that - in general - I don't agree with trying to treat trademarks as overly broad.

Maybe the "Moz" / "Doz" one is a little bit more of a grey area than I see it, I don't know... I'm biased towards a certain mindset here.

Re: How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice.

#140

Post by jennita » Fri, May 31, 2013, 8:00 PM UTC

Fuzzwah wrote: post #35

dohertyjf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Ben. Didn't realize it was against rules to not disclose that I'm affiliated with Moz. Will correct in the future.

You need rules to guide you on the fact that when you wade into a comment thread about the company you work for, its probably best to make that fact obvious?

He doesn't work for Moz, but I do. John is a "Moz Global Associate", but doesn't get paid by Moz. I however have commented a couple times and assumed my responses were enough to display I work there. But I should have definitely stated it more clearly as well.