ruby tuesday

Cristiano turned down my offer of turning over ownership of sluniverse to me.

Oh well, it's still my universe! nyah!

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BEARintheMorning

It's been said a few times and I agree. They are going to have a HELL of a time enforcing this after the fact.

Failure to aggressively enforce a trademark results in a very limited ability to do so later. Even if they've had provisions in the ToS regarding use of their logo and brand names the fact that they failed to strictly enforce those provisions in the past sets precedent.

Good luck to Our Hosts.

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You know you're addicted to drag racing when:

During the winter, you roll the windows down just to smell the tire smoke from skidding tires.

Travis Lambert

I only skimmed the blog post at first. I even fired off a naiive email to Mera saying "Hey, Look.... a nifty new SL logo we can add to the slbanlink website!"

Only after I saw the forum responses did I re-read, and grok the full gravity of this.

Saying I'm not amused would be the understatement of the century. I understand the service we're providing is controversial and all, but from Mera & I's perspective, we're providing it as a community service at our cost. After all the supportive energy we've received from Linden in the past - there could be no bigger slap in the face than to have to change our identity over something this trivial.


Edited to add: There's also the Shelter forums at slshelter.com. Lovely. My cheerleader uniform is starting to feel really dirty.

Ten

I got an IM this morning:

"MetaNewsNetwork thinks google is buying SL. They'll "break" the story soon."

1) Who the eff is Meta News Network, and
2) Why are they the ones breaking the story if no one else knows about it? Smells like a rumor.

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Dancien Graves

Meta News Network..google pulled up...nothing.

It's a rumor, has to be.

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Ten

Also was linked to this from SCD: the Eye in Hand / el Ojo en la Mano

Guess LL needs to rethink a little... mebbe.

FlipperPA Peregrine

C'mon! It was 8:30am or so when I read it, and I don't drink coffee!

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Peregrine Salon: Flip & Jenn's thang.

Cindy Claveau

ANNOUNCEMENT: Plans to create the new blog domain "SECOND FUCKWITS" are now postponed.

And we had a great motto already picked out, too: "Duh".

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Sometimes, "I hit it with my axe" is the best solution.

Cristiano

ARGH that stupid two generic nouns thing makes me angry. It is so incredibly arbitrary, like this entire thing.

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"At least he died doing what he loved most - blogging on the Huffington Post" - 30 Rock

* slu stuff *

ruby tuesday

my offer still stands Cris.

Ten

"SL Universe Fuckwits".

"SL Universe Hates You" (there, THREE!)

Travis Lambert

Maybe. I'll certainly run with that... but it also says "A 'generic noun' is a common noun and not a proper noun, trademark or brand name."

Grey area at the very least.

Cristiano

It is also must not be a verb, dangling participle, preposition or in future perfect tense, must be at least 5 letters though no more than 15, must be in a smaller font than the SL and must rhyme.

Ingrid

Am i missing something? It may be because of the type of work I do that i don't think this is a very big deal at all. How hard is it to add a ™ or a ® to your blogs/services whatever in an effort to become compliant?

When i made my website 3 years ago LL asked on their website that you add the following blurb:

Second Life® and Linden Lab™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended.

So I did and it took me 3 seconds and it didn't hurt at all.

ascii conversion for anyone interested:

™ = alt 0153 (hold alt down and type the numbers)
® = alt 0174
© = alt 0169

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"You know how this thread is going to end? I'll tell you how it's gonna end. It's going to end well." - Aimee Weber

Cristiano

You are missing something altogether. Among other things, they are now claiming SL is also a trademark, and restricting how it can be used in domain and product names. According to their wonderfully anal documentation, sluniverse.com, slprofiles.com, slbuzz.com and slexchange.com are all not acceptable names, TM or not.

Ingrid

have you loked into whether or not SLUniverse is trademarked? If it's not than you can get it trademarked and they can't do anything about it.

Ingrid

Where are you getting this?


This is what I read about that at their brand center page:

License To Use SL™ or inSL™. The words "SL" and "inSL" are different from the Second Life brand name, our distinctive Eye-in-Hand logo, and all of our other trademarks. Unlike these other trademarks, we've given you special permission to show the association of your business or organization with the Second Life virtual world by using "SL" or "inSL" with your business or organization name, product or service name, and Internet domain name, subject to our Guidelines and Terms and Conditions.

Solomon Devoix

Sure they can. Fair or not, legal or not, they can ban/delete your in-world account for daring to do that.

Ingrid

Oh come on. If you're going to use that logic, they'll also probably ban you for wearing mismatched sox.

Aodhan McDunnough

This therefore means SLUniverse/SLU is fine, SL Exchange is fine, but Second Life Herald is not.

Solomon Devoix

This is Linden Lab we're talking about here. I would be completely and totally unsurprised if that happened.

Joshua Nightshade

The way that reads to me is in the previous circumstances you can use their new inSL logo under the new guidelines, and all other circumstances are now a violation.

Cindy Claveau

Great idea. I changed my custom user title. Thanks!

Io Zeno

Ingrid, read this, they are very anal about the "two generic nouns" thing:

If SLDesign.com or SLArchitecture.com are NOT OK, then neither is SLUniverse.com

Aodhan McDunnough

My reading of it is using SL or inSL are fine regardless provided you conform to the guidelines. Guidelines are instructions regarding how to properly use such trademarks, things like distance, color, combinations, etc.

What is not allowed is "Second Life" and the eye-hand logo.