The supposed 'clarification' of the new trademark rules

The supposed 'clarification' of the new trademark rules are a huge let down to everyone, they in fact do nothing to clear up the questions of most residents or fan sites.

These fan site, website, blogs, newspapers etc have spent the last 4 years boosting Second Life's hits and promoting SL freely and enthusiastically, what are they to do now? Why would any company turn on the very people that love them and show it on a daily basis?

We all know how much revenue gambling brought SL™ but it didn't matter to Linden reasearch inc. ® This is a company that is determined to destroy itself by turning on the very people that have brought it the fame it now realises. Unfortunately they just do not seem to care, knowing that most will have to knuckle under or quit.

We at SL-Newspaper have no idea whether we are in breach of the new rules and will wait for the cease and desist letter. Another question that has arisen is whether the term 'SL' is trademarked anywhere else, a quick search under UK trademarks shows at least 50 SL trademarks - how does anyone know what the SL stands for? It could be Sally Long, Silly Losers, Stupid Lag or even Sri Lanka. Can anyone enforce not using the letters S and L together?

That is undoubtably a question a lot of us would like answered, instead we basically get a rewording of the original guidelines which yet again answer nothing, as Rheta Shan commented:

'It is, in short, useless drivel only designed to raise a smokescreen, providing a simulacrum of care while in essence openly declaring your complete and utter contempt for the people that have been your most supportive community and most successful evangelists.Dear Catherine Linden, and dear Linden Lab all, please take not that you are driving open eyed into major PR disaster. LL is headed for the kind of fame that struck so many other companies when they abrogated themselves abusive rights on their products and terms of services. If you want to make sure your best (and may I add : unpaid) publicists and supporters turn to alternatives and declare your product unsuitable and untenable, just do go on as you do.'

I absolutely loved Carter Giacobini's addition to the 'discussion':

What concerns me is that it seems that you’re getting ready to float an IPO, however, your interface is forever borked. I know… Instead of using the ridiculous amount of tier fees I pay you every single month, how about you hire at least one troubleshooter to review the viewers before they’re released. Or, maybe pay some overtime to the code poets who are writing the code for the viewer so that they have enough time to finish the job before releasing it. Or, maybe… just maybe… you should concentrate on creating a reliable product and even a halfway decent customer service team, demonstrating that you care about the residents of your world. Your slogan says that it’s our world and our imagination… But, these latest rules clearly show that’s false advertising. So, if you come after me for using your name, I’ll come after you for false advertising. Then you can use my tiers for paying lawyers to answer the same type of frivolous lawsuit I would bring against you that you would bring against me.

One Lawyer inSL Says stated:

Dear Linden Lab,'If you do not back down on enforcing your abuse and barely legal policy against the use of “SL” and remotely try to come after all those who previously and currently use the term SL in their business entity name and or domain, I am afraid there will be repercussions in the form of an inevitable class action lawsuit against Linden Research Inc. I would regrettably take part in such a lawsuit myself.You would be about to wage an unnecessary war with the core people who are the active force behind Second Life and made your company what it is today.

Half of creative SL residents have “SL” in their business names which was previously permitted by Linden Lab so long as non-affiliation with Linden Lab disclaimer was displayed. Such reversal on the term “SL” specifically shuts the door to the expansion of your brand rather than protect it. Your brand is Second Life, Linden Lab and the Second Life Grid, not SL. “SL” as many pointed out is a product of the residents themselves for naming Second Life.The inSL program is fine but please don’t overstep your boundaries.'

Another question oft raised has been will LL compensate for the change of domain names, pay for rebranding etc? The question has been asked although most already know the answer LOL. What can't be paid for is the years of marketing work most of us have spent building OUR brands that the new rules say we must change. I would love to see someone come along and tell them 'Sorry we already registered the name SL, you will have to rebrand in this country'

Watch this space for more news as we get it.

Dana

XXX

Source:

The following Letter was published by Gwyneth Llewelyn on her own blog. We are reprinting it here to show our support of its contents and in the hope it gets some response.

Dear Linden Lab®,Your recent change of policy regarding the usage of your trademarks — Second Life®, Linden Lab®, and others registered by Linden Research Inc. — will effectively prevent the operation of the very vibrant community of bloggers, forum posters, websites, community portals, and even 3rd party services, that have provided Linden Lab® with links and driving traffic to your blog, and raising brand awareness for free for your product Second Life®.Probably thousands — if not dozens of thousands — of sites include (now illegitimately) the name “Second Life®” or “SL®” somewhere in their names. From sites like Reuters (which has a Second Life® channel) to whole companies that have a “Second Life® Division” (and promotes your product by the explicit naming of it), a plethora of online communities, products, and services — some free, other commercial, many in the limbo between both extremes — include, in some way, your registered trademarks.Your previous policy, established in May 2004 (”Second Life® Fansite Tolkit”), and later reinforced with referral programmes like “Viva La Evolution”, positively encouraged the widespread use of your trademarks, so long as it was quite clearly displayed that no infringement was intended. To requote your own terms of agreement for the usage of your trademarks:USE OF SECOND LIFE MARKSWhile you are in full compliance with the usage guidelines described here, you may use the “Second Life” name on your website, as well as the related logos and graphics available at Toolkit, solely in the form described there. Additionally, you may use screenshots from Second Life to the extent that Linden Lab has the right to authorize use of the content within such screenshot, including screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines.Under those very friendly terms, a plethora of fansites of all sorts popped up, driving traffic to Second Life®’s main website, its blogs, forums, and other related sites — making SL®’s own ranking quite high on Google, Alexa, and other systems — while at the same time, in a period of a little less than four years, allowing the number of registered users to skyrocket from 10,000 to 13 million.Fansites, blogs, 3rd party sites, Second Life®-related online communities, 3rd party sites that create products and services related to Second Life® are the “off-world” counterpart of the dynamic and enthusiastic community that made Second Life®, as a brand, get world-wide recognition — without the need for Linden Lab® to spend millions in advertising and campaigns on the media. We worked for free on the promotion, brand awareness, and market recognition of your products — while, at the same time, we also worked for free creating the fantastic content of the 3D environment that makes Second Life® a place worth to visit, to enjoy, to chat, to socially connect, to do business, and launch the pillars of the upcoming metaverse — fulfilling Philip ‘Linden®’ Rosedale’s dream of having more users in Second Life® than on the Web.We’ve been the ones ultimately promoting that vision, spreading it around, and making sure that the world noticed your product and your brand. We were very successful — thanks to your gentle and encouraging former policies.And for four years, you have been thankful enough to allow us to do that promotion, by establishing very reasonable and clear guidelines of the terms of usage of your trademarks.Your sudden reversal of position — effectively limiting the display of the name “Second Life®” on most sites, domain names, products, and services, through a mechanism of explicit approval that you fully admit “can take long and might never finish” and will only be available to a very limited number of sites — means that suddenly all the off-world promotion of Second Life® will necessarily have to stop; or face a lawsuit in court; or, at the very least, receive a Cease & Desist letter from your lawyers and be forced to shut down.The current terms can be aggressively enforced or not. According to your blog, we are supposed to have a 90-day grace period to remove all mentioning of Second Life® and its logo from our fansites, blogs, forums, or 3rd party sites offering products and services related to Second Life®. In fact, what this means is that we are forced not to talk about Second Life® any more — or, if we do, we cannot explicitly name the product at all.This is, obviously, absurd.The compromise between Linden Research Inc. (owners of the registered trademarks) and the community of volunteers that have so faithfully promoted your product, Second Life®, was quite clear for the past four years. We had clear guidelines of what we could do and what we couldn’t. Abuses could still be effectively dealt with by your legal department; to the world’s knowledge, these cases were few and scattered, if any. They were not significative to prevent a vast number of dozens of thousands of sites of all sorts to draw traffic to your own site; to reach out the huge audience on the Internet; and to drive new users to register. The numbers fortunately speak for themselves: with almost zero promotional costs, you managed to grow a thousand times in four years, thanks to crowd sourcing the promotion of Second Life®.The “inSL” programme is definitely interesting, but a small new logo, worthless to an audience of hundreds of millions of users that are familiar with the eye-on-hand logo, without a massive campaign of promotion behind it to reflect the logo change, is not enough. “inSL” doesn’t say much, and it cannot be expanded to talk and promote Second Life® directly. And, anyway, the same restrictions apply to the usage of “inSL” as with all your other trademarks. We appreciate the grant to use that new logo, but we also feel it will be unable to gather the same support and promotional effort as the old logo and the product name did in the past four years.We would thus kindly request that you clarify your position regarding the usage of the trademarks Second Life® and the logo on all fansites, blogs, forums, or other 3rd party websites offering products and services related to Second Life®. This clarification should be as easy to follow as your previous policies on the usage of those trademarks. They should make clear that all people intending to promote your product and raise your brand awareness are not facing lawsuits because they have faithfully used your trademarks using the old policy, and wish to continue to do so in the future.We consider that an appropriate response should be forthcoming in the next few days, or we will be forced to shut down our own blogs, websites, forums, community portals, and other 3rd party sites to avoid litigation — and thus depriving Linden Lab® from the traffic generated by millions of direct links and millions of viewers that learn first about Second Life® through all those sites.=============================================

Permission is granted by the author to fully copy & adapt the text above if you wish.

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