Trademarks and What's In a Name

If some people have their way, be careful what you call your Web pages. Heck, be careful what you call the image files you place in your IMG SRC tags. On the Web page for my company, we have a GIF file called jvision.gif. It's used in a simple rollover script. So imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from Object Insight, Inc. requesting that I change the name of that graphic file... Why??? Read below!

It seems that Object Insight, Inc. has trademarked the name JVISION and on some search engines, when you search for jvision my site comes up higher than theirs. And, according to them, I have no right to use that name for my GIF file, because they own it. And they are dead serious. If I don't change it, they will have to, "unfortunately get their lawyers involved," which is the popular thing to do nowadays with anything Web related. What's next? Net police looking for unauthorized use of apple.gif or microsoft.jpg? I have seen the death of the Net, and it's got the smell of legal briefs all over it.

Comments

Tell 'em to stuff it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The name of a file is not the same as a name you're "doing business under", which is all a trademark protects (the consumer). Tell the Judge that any search engine could be massaged to give any type of answer needed (there are what 1000+ different search engines, that will all return slightly different scores for different webpages), and this company is just looking for people to bully.

Get them for harrassment, restraint of trade, etc.

Oh yeah, IANAL.

-- Ender, Duke_of_URL

Some similarities to other cases

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a case a few months ago in which someone received a threatening letter from a lawyer because the name of one of her directories supposedly infringed on a trademark. I read a posting from a lawyer saying it was legally ungrounded and she needn't rename her directory... I have a feeling this case is similarly ungrounded, but of course the best thing to do would be to have your company's lawyer look at it and make the appropriate response to the complaintant.

Another similarity is to the Leonardo Finance/Leonardo Journal case, in which Leonardo Finance is taking absurd steps to stop the 30-year-old Leonardo Journal from using the name "Leonardo", due to a similar situation involving search engine rankings. After reading this story about the GIF, I'd suggest that everyone competing in the Leonardo Finance Search Engine Competition name an image "leonardofinance.gif"...

Re:Some similarities to other cases

[panet]

I just had my own case. Two weeks ago a trademark infringement letter was sent to me by IDG, Inc, parent company of the Dummies books, The Industry Standard, PCWorld, MacWorld, LinuxWorld, Infoworld, Sunworld, etc, etc. They demanded I turn over my domain name to them immediately or go to court. I sent a rebuttal letter and put up a website proving I was neither infringing or diluting their trademark. Two days later they accepted my suggestion I link to them and agreed to drop the case. No litigation, no lawyers involved, no courts. I have all the information on my site and hope the word gets passed around how IDG corporate legal dept agreed to not pursue this reverse domain name hijacking. I'm hoping it could serve as precedent for others. I don't wish this experience on anyone. This took over my life and infuriated me, but the ending is good and I'm hoping it can help others. http://www.eInfoworld.com

Misuse of the law

[DragoonAK]

IANAL but last time I checked, trademarks were meant to prevent confusion among customers between competing products. That's why someone could trademark Windows beer - there's no product confusion between that and OSes.

So this is bullshit - call on the lawyers and mad dogs.

Re:Misuse of the law

[Greg Merchan]

Ahh...but...

The "product" is a web page and the "confusion" occurs when jimjag's page is more highly ranked than Object Insight, Inc's page.

At least that what the plaintif could argue.
(BTW, IANAL, SEA, SAO)

Also jimjag failed to tell us where his company's web site is and what they do. How do we know that they aren't competitors? According to their website, JVISION is available for Linux. From scanning the page I guess that it is similar to Dia. If jimjag's company employs Dia developers, there may be case. (ROFLMAO)

They (OI) should probably sue those search engines too, for 'contributory negligence' or something like that. Oh, and if anyone has JVISION on a page criticising it or OI, they should be sued for 'restraint of trade' (or something like that). Then we can also go after the small-time search engines that don't turn up any results at all, call it 'denial of existence'. Then there are sites that link to any of the offending pages, including web-based email, and of course sites that don't link to OI's index page. And then there are the sites that deep-link to OI's pages or put them in a frame. Did I mention the part of the world that doesn't get on the web or the net? Lock up all of them too.

This was fun.

Re:Misuse of the law

[nlaporte]

I know that years ago, when Apple Computer entered the biz, Apple Records sued them for trademark infringment. The end result was that Apple had to promise, in writing, never to enter the recording business. Later, when Apple started including microphones w/ their Macs, someone was afraid of a lawsuit. Thus the alert sound 'So-su-mi' was created.

I think the search engine thing

[karb]

Is kind of their own stupid fault.

It's actually kind of funny.

Anyway, I've been led to believe that trademarks are only meant to apply to certain fields. That's why there can be linux handsoap. If there was some way to trademark images you could trademark the image jvision.gif and sue them back.

I think. The truth of the matter is you might have to go to court. I'd encourage you to stick it to the man, but that just might not be an viable option. You would probably have to at least a$k a real lawyer if there's any basis. Ugh.