Final post on O’Reilly and trademarks
I am so tired and bored of this, but I owe it to the audience to reflect a bit.
The obligatory NYTImes article has appeared, Ian Betteridge is still arguing how rightful O’Reilly is, FactoryJoe (Chris Messina) let it rip and made it clear where he stands as he states ‘BarCamp is a community mark’.
Denise Howell also left a thoughful comment which points out that I wouldn’t be too pleased if someone started calling themselves Broadband Mechanics - one day. But this isn’t that sort of situation.
Web 2.0 conference - to me - is not the affair that John Battelle so thoughtfully puts on (which I actually think is the best show around - after Gnomedex.) It is an explanation of a conference about a certain kind of technology, era and attuitude. That’s what I’d expect to find in Cork.
But I don’t agree with Denise about someone taking the term digiital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) and running with it. I’d love that - I just hope they give me some credit after their first $100M. Its more than Adam Curry gave Dave Winer.
We also have a law professor’s opinion (Eric Goldman) and a lawyer practicing trademark law opinion (Marty Schwimmer) on the whole thing.
So hopefully all the evidence is in place and we can now all just shut up and wait for Tim to get back - and apologize.
May 29th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Amen.
May 30th, 2006 at 6:48 am
Thanks Marc. Note both Marty and Eric (who you linked to) further explain why they think this mark is a weak one. It’s weak for the same reason “digital lifestyle aggregator” would be — i.e., you’ve encouraged people to take that and run with it, to associate its meaning with a concept, not a company. “Broadband Mechanics” is another story, right?
May 30th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Tim’s response: http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar/atom?m=965
Two key quotes:
“While I admit that the cease-and-desist letter to IT@Cork was a faux pas, the blogosphere response and especially the comments on Sara’s posts to the Radar blog have been appalling both in their tone (even to the point of one comment, which Marc Hedlund deleted in my absence, implying that I’m a child molester!) and in their lack of any fact checking. (Thanks to those brave blog commenters who suggested that the mob hold off till I was back and able to respond.)”
“Given that Tom and I had previously had a conversation where I wished him the best of luck with his conference, while the lawyer’s letter came from CMP, I would have thought that he would have wondered whether the right hand knew what the left hand was doing before launching and then encouraging the torrent of net vitriol that’s come our way. He did call CMP to talk to the lawyer who wrote the letter, but he never tried to contact me. While he acknowledges that the letter was from CMP, he used O’Reilly’s name in the headline and repeatedly throughout the piece for maximum net impact. So while we owe Tom an apology for heavy-handed tactics, I think Tom owes us an apology for the way he responded.”
Tim also addresses the issue of the Web 2.0 service mark, but I think these passages are actually, if anything, more important.
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FYI Ian
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