Registered Trademark

One of my favorite sites to read, I even have an RSS feed link to it, is www.techdirt.com a site that deals with current technology related issues that pop up at any given time. Their most consistent topics concern Copyright and Trademark issues and the goofy going concerns of the various entertainment industries. Of course they also write about new things coming out, things being hyped, and a wide range of topics, but you will not go a day without multiple posts on the above topics. So it was quite amusing to me that last month I felt like I had a reason to write into them about a strange occurrence that happen to me.

Before I can get into though I have to briefly mention that when I write my blogs I try not to mention people’s names, the company I work for, clients of mine directly, or 3rd parties my company deals with. Basically I am just applying a simple CYA algorithm to my writing.

So I had planned on breaking my above rule in a recent post of mine. I was rather impressed with a third party I had dealt with. They made our work a ton easier. I even learned their toolset and methodologies and was quite impressed. So originally my plan was to write about them and use one of their marketing tag lines as the title of the post. While writing the post turned out not to mention them by name, I just couldn’t break the habit, and I did not even write anything specific about what kind of project I worked on or any of that. But not really thinking or caring I left the title the same.

Not two days after posting the article I got an email that someone had posted a comment. Normally comments come from my wife, siblings, or parents so I went to read it. Instead it was posted by this unnamed third party I had worked with. By the CEO of that company no less. Essentially the email was a cease and desist notice to not use their trademarked phrase. I found this rather humorous for a number of reasons. One it was the CEO, who I had met at one point, taking the time to do this. Two the phrase is just a few common words strung together and was not being used to promote any product (making it technically not a trademark violation from my limited understanding). And Finally the speed at which I was requested to no longer use the phrase. I assume they use an automated search to find its use and my blog is indexed and therefore searchable.

Now even though I don’t think I was in violation of trademark, I had not really written about the company, at least buy name. So I changed the title of the post just to avoid any further animosity. I may work with this company again and I don’t need to have them upset at me. And of course I understand them going after this aggressively, trademark law requires that you actively defend your marks or you forfeit them. So I think no Harm no Foul. But still it was funny. Now I wonder if Techdirt will even notice that I linked to them. I am pretty sure they won’t care; they seem to encourage such behavior.

And no I won't say what the trademark was and deleted the comment on the previous post.