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Court Tells Disney to Pull Go.com Logo
dkh2 writes "Today on ZDNet: A U.S. District Court has denied a request by Disney, InfoSeek and others to stay a preliminary injunction against their familiar green and yellow logo. The injunction orders Disney to remove the logo immediately from all broadcast and internet media and gives them 60 days to remove it from other more solid forms." And Disney/Infoseek has started to comply. You can see the change at Go.com right now.
goto.com has a green circular logo on a yellow background.
go.com had a green circular logo on a yellow background.
www.goto.com has an portal page with links to catagories like auctions, real estate and small business.
www.go.com has an portal page with links to catagories like auctions, real estate and small business.
Obviously these two companies are in the same line of business, and the two logos are similar, so this to me looks like a reasonable trademark case.
I agree that the logos are similar, but they're certainly differnt enough that anyone with an IQ higher than an old pair of socks should be able to tell the difference.
The GoTo.com logo is essentially "GoTo.COM" in white on a green circle background. The Go Network logo is "Go" superimposed on a traffic light.
Sooner or later there will be no acceptable logos left.. the courts will rule that Westinghouse's "W" logo is too close to the McDonald's "M" logo. After all, it may confuse someone if one is just an upside-down version of the other.
- Drew
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
I've never looked at either of the two web sites, but seeing on of the logos on TV (ESPN or ABC I think), I always associated the two. I never noticed the distinction between GoTO.com and go.com. Now, I'll have to investigate what goto.com is all about. Free advertising. Then again, I guess the lawyers aren't all that free.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
They're both a play on the familiar traffic signal design, which is yellow, with a green circle signifying go. How can goto claim to own a traffic signal design? If someone used a similar label for a site called stop.com, would they sue over that? Craziness.
Communication is only possible between equals
You can still see the old logo on their so-called G-rated jokes page. I suppose the jokes are funny if you're about 4 years old.
It appears that http://go.com and all the affiliates (espn, abc, etc.) have already changed from the old go.com logo. The new one is pretty uninspired.
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IanO
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Objects in Mirror are Losing!
When I saw the headline, for a fleeting moment I had a vision:
Mickey Mouse, shorts around his ankles, being spanked over Janet Reno's knee.
Didn't Go.com's 'Executive-Vice-Weenie' type get busted for interstate traffiking in kiddie porn?
.sig: Now legally binding!
I noticed the missing logo earlier today while doing a little searching on infoseek. I still refuse to use infoseek.go.com and still type infoseek.com just out of pure stuborness.
The only thing that bothers me is I though go.com was going after goto.com for the similarity. I didn't realize it was the other way around. Or did the courts just turn around and bite the guys who brought the suit up in the first place?
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
If people associate goto.com with such a big well branded name, then I would think that that is a good thing.
No, you see, now goto.com gets all that inadvertent name recognition like before with the added advantage of go.com losing it. Of course once go.com starts their new ad campaign, goto.com will probablly get eventuall lost in the clutter of all-the-same portals, so in the end Yahoo wins because their site is A.) Clean and easy to use, B.) Has major name recognition and C.) Has that commercial with the guy with a 'fro.
Ah, white guys with 'fros. It works on so many levels.
I'll start off the lists...
Similarities:
Differences:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
it's about time someone stuck it to the Mouse Machine. With this (albeit minor) win against Disney and the (major) FoF against Micros~1 is seems that the times might actually be a-changin when it comes to corporate welfare and general overloardness (does that make any sense to anyone? I hope so). True there is still much injustice and stupidity in the system (think patents). But is just seems that some people that actually have a bit of brains to go along with their power have decided to use a bit of common sense for once. Jeeze who knows what may happen next. Dare I ask?
(Yea, it's just as easy to bash the mouse as it is to bash the bill but it makes me feel better after a long day at work)
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
This is actually the first notice I've received that Disney did not actually buy GoTo.com and take the To out of their name. Sure, the logo is obvious, but its ability to confuse is (to me, at least) obvious - I honestly believed that the GO network logo was just a revamped GoTo.com logo.
Yeah, sure, maybe they came up with it independently, and that sure would suck - but they are directly competing, younger, and someone who is not looking at them side-by-side is very likely to be confused.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
goto.com considered harmful
... the 'validation' method for fingerprinting :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Sure, they're obviously different - when you put them side by side. Trouble is, that would rarely happen on a website or any other medium. The design elements (rectangular yellow border, green circle, white lettering of 'GO', hell, the font is the EXACT same) are such that Disney's version could indeed cause confusion, if only one logo is seen.
People rarely consciously 'see' advertising anymore (what ad banners have you seen during your current surfing session? Name them all, the companies and products they're pitching, please. See?) - it's all taken in as vague patterns, and used to recognise or remember a certain item later when it's seen again. Guaranteed, if you walked past 30 billboards in a day, each with one or the other of those logos in the corner, at the end of the day, you would *not* be able to tell how many of each there were - all you would remember would be a square border, green circle, and something about 'GO' in it... and the associations you make with the logo and the content of the boards may not be something that GoTo.com wants you to make.
That's what all this is about. Consider - it wouldn't be any different from the GoTo/Disney situation if I came up with a logo that had a very realistic-looking burger bun surrounding the words 'Burger Town' in the Burger King colors and font. I'd get my ass sued off, and rightfully so.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
About 20 years ago, I was talking to a commercial artist about designing me a logo and he said that this idea, which is pure bunk, has been floating around for about 80 years.
Saying that there will be "no acceptable logos left" is like saying there will be no acceptable artwork after this piece is done, no acceptable music after this one, or on a less artistic plane no more inventions after this one. Please, any creative commercial artist worth his weight will always be able to come up with a new logo design that hasn't been protected yet. Please.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
The biggest joke in the entire Go v. GoTo war is that Disney probably could have gotten away with a small font change, a more pronounced traffic signal, and a black-with-white-outline backdrop instead of the yellow that GoTo used.
The reality is that Disney figured, heh, we're Disney and they're just some little company using Inktomi's database to sell a few banners. Screw 'em.
That they refused to budge--at all--probably created a more vicious response from the judge than they might have already gotten.
Incidentally, choosing logos and naming companies isn't entirely that simple. Back when I was still convention hopping(sigh why am I not at Comdex right now?) Infospace, the software company, was quite royally peeved at Infospace, everybody's favorite personal and business info search engine.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
What happened in Scotland was that McDonalds threatened to sue someone who had a restaurant named McDonald's Restaurant, but backed down when they found out that this was the McDonald of the clan McDonald and that by Scottish law he could probably prevent them from taking the name.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
In the real world McDowell would have had his ass sued off by McDonald's, so your point is moot.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
This kind of thing is called "reverse confusion", that is, the little guy was first, and got swamped by the big ad campaign of the later, bigger company. The problem that causes is that practically everyone forgets that you, the little guy, exists. Your business identity gets swallowed up in mega-advertising which does nothing to lead people to you. They might think better of you once they find you, but the problem is that they may never think to find you or that you exist. Distinctiveness of identity is so important where a marketplace is going to have a lot of players equally accessible by customers. That describes the internet in spades. If GoTo is right, it had every reason to be unhappy.
Here's a useful overview of the law surrounding trademark confusion. I recommend that Slashdotters read it before posting uninformed opinions.
It's not mentioned here, but there's a new law (the Trademark Anti Dilution Act of 1999) addressing this issue, that gives more protection to so-called "famous marks". This has been cited before in regards to domain names, which seems to be one of its main thrusts.
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Lake Effect, a weblog
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
It sounds like an urban myth, but in this case it actually happened. Here's a
news storywith links to others.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"