NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Question of ethics...
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Question of ethics...
Kief Morris (kief_at_kief.com)
Mon, 11 Aug 1997 16:00:47 -0400
At 10:52 AM 8/8/97 -0500, Michael J. Sexton wrote:
>This sounds like we need more specifics before we can generate an opinion.
>Some companies have names that become synonomous (sp?) with the product.
>For example, I would certainly use the word "Xerox" as a keyword in a
>copier company's site, even if they only sell Canon copiers. Everyone has
>said at some time that they are "xeroxing" a document, even when they are
>using a Savin copier.
>
>Trademark lawyers would call this a fair use. The word has an alternative
>meaning to the trademarked name "Xerox." My first question is whether the
Actually, trademark lawyers call this losing your trademark.
If you allow people to use your trademark as a generic term
you lose the right to enforce it. This is why Xerox mounted
a campaign to discourage people from using their trademark
in a generic sense, which is why you seldom hear people
using the word that way these days. Nowadays people tend to
talk about copying rather than Xeroxing.
If you did use the word Xerox to apply to a non Xerox
product, and it came to Xerox's attention they would sue
you, just as Toys R Us sues companies which call themselves
"Foos R Us". If they didn't, legally the trademark would
become unenforceable, like "Frisbee" and "Yo-yo" to name a
couple.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've read and heard about this issue
in several marketing classes, among other places.
It's interesting to note the application this has to domain
names. Gateway 2000, for instance, is running around using
their mighty legal budget to bludgeon smaller companies into
giving up domain names with "Gateway" in them, gateway.com
being one example. Their justification for this is that if
they don't, they'll lose their trademark. This is one reason
I don't expect the seven new TLD's to open up many decent
names - the big companies are going to immediately buy up
all the same names they already have under .com under the
new TLD's. If you get to gateway.web (or whatever) before
they do, you'd better have a hefty budget for lawyers. Even
though you could probably defend your use of "gateway" if
you're not selling computers under that name, you'd run out
of money first.
Kief
==================================================
Kief Morris Web Developer's Journal
www.kief.com www.nctweb.com
kief_at_kief.com
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