Slashdot Mirror
O'Reilly and CMP Exercise Trademark on 'Web 2.0'
theodp writes "On May 16, the USPTO notified CMP Media, which co-presents the Web 2.0 Conference with O'Reilly, that its trademark for Web 2.0 was entitled to be registered. Eight days later, CMP sicced its lawyers on not-for-profit IT@Cork, taking the networking organization to task for not only using the term Web 2.0 for its free conference, but also for linking to a What is Web 2.0 article penned by Tim O'Reilly." It should be noted that their trademark only applies to the titles of industry events (CMP is a show organizer).
In an effort to curb the misuse of my technological terms by the industry, I am now trademarking Web 3.0, Web 4.0, Web 5.0, Web 6.0, Web 7.0, Web 8.0, Web 9.0, Web 1337.0, Web 69.0 and Web Pi.
Web 3.0-9.0 refer to the idea of websites being more and more progressively interactive with the user. The final, Web 9.0, requiring electrodes implanted in your brain so you actually walk between websites and are subject to the sounds & smells of the internet. It is not advised to use 9.0 if you don't have adequate protection against script kiddies.
Web 1337.0 refers to the idea that websites should be covered in flying toasters and dancing Jesuses and massive abuse of blinking marquee tags.
I'd describe the other Web x.0s but then Slashdot would be linked to those descriptions and I would be obligated to sue the OSTG.
This is an unfortunate but necessary move on my part to protect the idea of these terms. On what grounds do I register these trademarks? I have meme maps! And I'm not afraid to publish them!
My work here is dung.
I am now creating Web 2.1 and releasing it under a full open creative commons license. Use it however you want.
Web 2.0 is now deprecated.
I recommend we commence immediately on Web 3.0, which is exactly like Web 2.0, only spelt differently.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Pity. It was a nice line of books, too.
My conference is going to be Web 2.1 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate 3 Build 5781 and all of those guys are going to feel quite the fool.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
I'll believe that when I see it. I know the law says trademarks are compartmentalized, but go start a landscaping business named "Microsoft" and tell me how it goes.
And the answer isn't YEAH RLY!
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
What is the point of coining a meaningless buzzword to describe a perfectly normal evolution of technology, if you're then going to sue everyone who uses it? It's not like Web 2.0 has any hard assets or IP.
That's like Google suing everyone who uses the verbed form of their name.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Ages ago my buddies and I announced web 0.1.1 pre-alpha build 1 but we did not register any trademarks just after the web was invented.
"Houston, we have a problem."
I'm so glad they did this, because now we can all acknowledge that WEb 2.0 is well and truly played, and move on to new and better buzzwords. With this move will come an opportunity to pick memes taht actually represent real items! Or probably just Web 3.0 dang.
Changa hates change.
And now I am trademarking "Web Infinity" and "Web Infinity + 1"
What a fitting metaphor.
Well, you wouldn't expect to be able to hold a local gathering of electronics vendors and call it the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
It's not like they can go after you for making an application and saying it's a "Web 2.0 app". In fact, they'd like that because it would validate their existence.
If we can't use "Web 2.0", what alternatives can we use?
Maybe "New Web II: Electric Boogaloo" would do the trick.
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
Completely appreciated - that's the funniest thing I've seen today.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Bill O'reilly is exercising his trademark on "O'Reilly" all O'Reilly's including Tim may soon have to take on the Prince-like title of "The Tim formerly known as O'Reilly".
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
I have never once seen Web 2.0 acknowledged as a trademark. Web 2.0 is in common use to describe a certain style of website.
Ergo they have already lost any right to use this trademark.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
There you go.
Just call it "it@cork Web Two-Point-Oh Half Day Conference".
It doesn't really matter if it's 'Web 2.0' or 'AJAX' or whatever buzzword is hot at the moment, it's in poor stead that O'Reilly and CMP have acted in this manner against a small not-for-profit. It seems that this show would only stand to benefit THEM as it's focused on the very same things they're purporting to 'protect', so why would they take action against it?
I would be less inclined to call foul if they were filing suit against someone using their trademark to profit unjustly, but unfortunately it's not. This will only harm O'Reilly's reputation.
Tim, get on the case! Do something about this complete and utter ridiculousness.
While normally I'm not a big fan of trademark silliness, in this case I wholeheartedly approve. Maybe now the stupid meme will finally die.
Now, if only we could get somebody to trademark the term "AJAX".
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Dibs on Web 95OSR2, and Web ME.
Phew! Am I glad O'Reilly only release crap book nowadays, so I won't be missing anything worth having by neglecting their merchandise (boycott is such an ugly word).
O'Reilly and CMP threatened an Irish company over the use of Web 2.0 based on a US application for a service mark it seems. Well unless O'Reilly and CMP have an Irish or EU trademark or service mark, they have no rights to the term in Europe. Perhaps someone should explain that harsh reality to them. In threatening IT@Cork, O'Reilly and CMP have shown themselves to be no better than Jeff Bezos with his One Click patent etc. It is sad to see such a great reputation destroyed by the careless actions of lawyers.
Time to register in bulk Web 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5 .... 2007, ... 3000, 4000 ....
Eh? AJAX is actually quite a handy term for a well defined set of technologies that have very clear, useful applications. The term (ands the technologies) may be open to abuse but it's more of a DHTML than a Web 2.0.
I'd like to encourage everyone to trademark other overused buzzwords and start suing people. Soon, we just might be living in a completely buzzword-free world!
Same people who bought Black Hat? Sucks.
That's just an excerpt, follow the link for the whole [brief] comment. They also point out, rightfully so, that they would not be able to have a "LinuxWorld conference," and this is no different. It's a service mark, they have to defend it, end of story.
The same name thing in differant industries is usually just fine.
TFA shows a letter from CMP, which mentions CMP's involvement with O'Reilly, but does not seem to be claiming to act on O'Reilly's behalf. "CMP hereby demands..." "CMP further demands..." but I see no demand from O'Reilly. This seems to be CMP acting to claim trademark on the term "Web 2.0" as it applies to their conferences, not a larger claim by O'Reilly and CMP for ownership of the term in all contexts.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I hope they succeed in preventing people from using the dumbest buzzword of the 21st century. I really do.
So everyone stops using it :-)
From the USPTO tarr system:
Current Status: The final review before registration has been completed for this Intent to Use application and it will register in due course.
Date of Status: 2006-05-10
Filing Date: 2003-11-03
GOODS AND/OR SERVICES
International Class: 035
Class Status: Active
Arranging and conducting live events, namely, trade shows, expositions and business conferences in various fields, namely, computers, communications, and information technology
Basis: 1(a)
First Use Date: 2004-10-05
First Use in Commerce Date: 2004-10-05
International Class: 041
Class Status: Active
Organizing and conducting educational conferences, tutorials and workshops in the fields of computers, communication and information technology
Basis: 1(a)
First Use Date: 2004-10-05
First Use in Commerce Date: 2004-10-05
They're trying to trademark it for use with business conferences, not copyrighting it for all uses. They applied in November 2003, so this has been pending for a while.
That said, it's pretty dirty pool to lower the boom on a not-for-profit organization over a lousy phrase like Web 2.0, which has little meaning to anyone who actually works with technology on a day-to-day basis. It's not like the phrase is plastered on every piece of software I download or use.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Yes! Finally a good use for trademarking/copyrighting/patenting. Now maybe people can call it "client-side DOM scripting" AKA "browser abuse".
This should cause at least some people to stop using the silly term WEB 2.0.
Perhaps it's just me that doesn't "grok" the importance of this "new paradigm," but I don't think it merits a new buzz-term.
But since WEB 2.0 is nearly as clunky and awkward as BLOG, it's sure to become another popular buzz-term.
- Very, very insightful -
It is plainly wrong for companies to take our IP protection on overly broad terms, which are already in the public domain - but to then seek to enforce them is clearly even worse.
The writer of the Open Letter to Jeff Bezos knew what he was talking about.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
Is there a method for filing objections with the USPTO? Maybe if
a group filed the objection, we could get the service mark overturned.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
It's O'Reilly.
Web 2.0 is an ineffably stupid buzzword. Anyone who uses it should shift their paradigm immediately.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You may now realize this, but patents and trademarks are two completely different things.
O'Reilley has done us a service. We can now be clear what is meant by "Web 2.0"(c), namely, a marketing term, just like "Windows 98", "Microsoft Vista", or "Toys R' Us".
The LinuxWorld example is flawed. Of cause they cannot name their conference LinuxWorld. Preventing anyone from using "Linux" in the name of their conference about Linux, now that is the right analogy to what O'Reilly is doing.
Just use "Web 3.0" everywhere you'd use "Web 2.0". Argue that, "it is the natural evolution of the web after the Web 2.0 label ran into legal difficulties." In doing so, you're actually helping kill of the stupid buzzword because it starts to lose meaning.
"Litigation in a nutshell"
sic transit gloria mundi
Doesn't surprise me from CMP; I think the bottom line is all that matters for this company. I still remember when they bought Byte Magazine, put it on "hiatus" for months while they "restructured" it, then decided it was better to *kill* it, and then had the gall to offer subscribers a "migration" to Windows Magazine; why in hell would I migrate from one of the few cross-platform-oriented magazines around, to *WINDOWS MAGAZINE*? I told them no, and of course I didn't get a refund on my subscription money.
There are those in CMP who genuinely care about their audience (such as a very kind person who offered me a subscription to Byte on the web after I made a comment similar to this one here, on slashdot, see this story); but it looks like upper management is filled with nothing but sharks. And nasty ones, at that.
Well, I probably can't change the patent situation soon enough, but I can change my mind about attending OSCON this year.
I sure had a nice time last year, and it felt great to be a part of something different - but it looks like things are changing at the O'Reilly camp. Thanks for the fun and learning guys - especially you, Randall! - but I think I'll save my money this year.
If this is what Web 2.0 means, I think will wait for the sequel . . .
Cork, Ireland is not in the US PTO's jurisdiction. No mention is made about applications to European authorities. It's surely ludicrous to suggest a regional (not even national) non-US trade association would be bound by the application as posted.
So they'd let me build this for peoples' gardens?
l paper_3.jpg
http://snow.prohosting.com/sthemes/Windows_XP_Wal
Maybe with Microsoft embrazed in Hollywood hill letters.
...to cut down on the use of an overused, increasingly meaningless, buzzword.
All your Web 2.0 are belong to us!
...it had to be said...
"When you reach the thing you were desiring, if it doesn't satisfy you, it was not what you were desiring." C.S. Lewis
It seems they regret the way this was handled
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I didn't RTFA, but it pisses me off that this guy is able to lay claim to generic terms like "web 2.0" just by saying them on his TV show. I guess he doesn't make enough money spouting lies and propaganda to the feebleminded so he has to exploit our bloated patent system. Maybe he shuold also patent "a method to weaken democracy through divisive demagoguery" and sue Rush Limbaugh. Of course Rush could demonstrate the prior art of Joseph Goebbels.
And what the hell does the Canadian Mounted Police have to do with it?
http://web2con.com/cs/web2006/view/e_spkr/1848
The lawyer I work with always recommends making up names at the very least by jamming words together.
Using common words -with or without spaces- is a weak trademark case no matter the size of the company.
Like most things, might makes right even in the weak cases. So Microsoft can slam-dunk pretty much anyone even though their case is weak. Look at how the Lindows vs. Microsoft case went,that gives you a clue how weak their situation is.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
www.oreillynet.OMG!!!PONIES!!!LOL!!!
* * * * *
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
--Groucho Marx
Do I win?
/Bonzos forever!
Seems like all they want is the ability to host exclusive conferences on their trademarked topic, which is fine sort of,
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Why is this more fine just because you don't care about the phrase "Web 2.0", which should be generic and not trademarkable?
The day people learn the ends doesn't justify the means, we will have Heaven On Earth.
"LinuxWorld" is cited as a service mark they (O'Reilly) can't use. By analogy, we're supposed to see "Web 2.0" an equivalent situation. Sorry, but I have never heard of LinuxWorld technologies. or LinuxWorld applications. People don't go around adding significant value to the "LinuxWorld" service mark. IMHO "Web 2.0" has become too generic to be locked up in a service mark. And if the government and legal system says it can be, then we should simply boycott any conference that uses "Web 2.0" in its title or description and boycott any O'Reilly publications that have "Web 2.0" in the title.
Has the 'Web 2.0' Patch Release Schedule been submitted to the USPTO?
If 'Web 2.0' is patched will they call it 'Web 2.0a' or 'Web 2.0.1'
Get your own "Tim O'Reilly, Original Web 2.0 Asshole" graphic here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/153656919/
It's Creative Commons licensed and all, feel free to use it all you like!
We will just not use the fucking 'web 2.0' string in any of our conversations and text thats all. God forbid if i am going to pay any moron royalty for using 7 char length string in my text. Tell them to shove web 2.0, 2.0 times up their arses.
Read radical news here
Think of this another way, if I started a non profit and started having a COMDEX trade show, or a USENIX show, I probably should be sued.
In this case the two shows may or may-not have been independantly created, but CMP still is required by trademark law to take action against others using their trademark (is the same field), or they lose the right to that mark. And a cease and desist doesn't really hurt anyone, except for whatever promotional materials etc. have to be redone.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Don't forget "Learning Litigation" and "Litigation 2.0" (Upps, couldn't resist!). What kind of cover animals will they use for those?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Stop buying their books.
Every single one of them is available for download from various p2p nets and if this is an example of how they are going to use the money we give them then they don't need it anymore.
Sidenote: This is why Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. At the time, he was in a tiff with Sony/Warner Bros. So he changed his name AND owned the trademark/copyright on the Prince symbol. Once he did that, he could deny Sony the use of that symbol (and anyone else he didn't agree with). He owned the "font" for the symbol, you might say. And he owned all typeblocks of the symbol. In other words, if you wanted to print that symbol -- at all -- then you had to get Prince's permission.
But Sony (and others) just routed around it and started calling him "the artist formerly known as Prince".
The wiki is a little light on the details but you can get the jist of it here. While not specifically mentioned, it's easy to see how this was supposed to work (and didn't). And I have heard interviews with Prince since that time where he talks about the trademark/copyright issues involved.
Email 2.0 is mine :D
While web 3.0 and web (pi)- the transcendental web- work, there are other possibilities:
At any rate, their "the web is buzzing" dismissal-phrase isn't helping. Bees buzz. People have a glut of ebWay 2.0 conferences to choose from (not to mention the 1/1000 priced ad-hoc conferences that Web TwoPtOught tech makes possible), so bad publicity isn't going to help the conference. All its going to do is make web 2.0 seem so web 1.0. or 1999 2.0.
Didn't they think to run this application by a mailing list or two? Does O'Reilly not have a panel of no-men: a group of folks comfortable with saying "dude, that sux" to Tim if he needs to escape the echo-chambers of normal CEO-hood?
At first I thought this was totally absurd, I mean trademarking a term that basically characterizes the evolution of technology...and only for the purpose of selling this techno-ideology to businesses is just insane, or is it really?
I mean considering how much this term is going to be thrown around in the coming year(s) and there is potentially so much to be gained from companies employing new IT strategies based on this concept, maybe it really is a good idea to have someone as reputable and unbiased as OReilly protecting this trademark to ensure that scam artists and shaddy businesses cant try to throw it around to their advantage.
Considering that they seem to be worried mainly about conferences I think this is probably valid because these conferences can have a lot of influence on people who attend them hoping to learn about this new approach and see how it fits into their company strategy. It is important that we not have what we had with the first tech bubble with a bunch of people pitching unwarranted hype and then having the people that actually listened to them go off and blow a bunch of money on a technological and business failure. This would only deter the Web 2.0 approach from really gaining the momentum it deserves.
Just think about it, if we had had this type of enforcement with the first tech bubble...the bubble might not have burst in the first place because people would have been making smarter business decisions.
Whatever though, just as long as they dont go suing people just for using the term and strictly for the purpose of upholding the validity of the term.
God is REAL unless declared INTEGER. Simple. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Web 2 Changelog
Version 2.0.1
2006-05-26
* Bumped version number to make trademark a moot point.
Version 2.0
2006-05-25
* Trademark Registered by O'Reilly.
Perhaps the inverse of Striesand effect would apply here. If they did succeed in blocking others from using the term, then there wouldn't be any buzz, and people could just forget about it.
h atitis, ...
However, if the trend continues, I think you need to revise your numbering strategy. Popular sequences include numbers like:
2, 3, 5, 8 (got to keep up with the competition), 97, 2000, millenium, experience, 2003, enterprise, premium, 11.5, somecodenamethatspointlessbecauseyoutelleveryonew
-- All your bass are below two Hz
There's nothing like a trademark and some entity becoming asses about its' use to kill it off.
May the web continue to evolve, but for heavens sake every evolution doesn't need a new name.
Can't wait to see what Web 3.0 will be...
now if only we could find someone to wack a trademark on all other annoyingly meaningless buzzwords! Just think, whenever some phb starts discussing the need to proactively synergise flibbergibbets (or whatever), a crack team lawyers would leap out from behind a filing cabinet and drag him off to the nearest courthouse. It would be heaven :)