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cyfishyDear Linden Lab:
I understand that this is a bit of a difficult time for you. Rumors have it that you're trying to shine things up for an IPO, and between stabilizing the grid and appeasing your angry customer base, you've got quite a bit on your plate.
I know you want to clean house before the nice guests in the suits show up, but, let me tell you, flinging out the dirty bathwater and ignoring the screams of the infant you flung out with it is really not the way to go about it.
The lawyers who have been advising you on the trademark issue need to pull their heads out of the case history and pay a little attention to how things like this actually work. Because, at this point, much of what you're doing is solving a problem that you're not really in danger of having.
I can indeed understand that a site like talksecondlife could be inadvertently seen as having some kind of connection with you. I think you might want to unclench a bit on the SL business, but that's just me.
But insisting that people refer to "the Second Life world" and "the Second Life viewer" is incredibly pointless and just makes you look like you don't even know what the hell Second Life is.
I presume the fear is that "Second Life" will somehow become genericized the way "Xerox" and "Kleenex" have. This fear is absurdly unfounded, when you look at other examples of similar situations.
Example #1 -- Software programs in general. My fleshy self works in an office that uses both Word and WordPerfect for word processing. The preferred program is WordPerfect, but they reluctantly use Word when dealing with documents to be emailed to clients. While documents can be converted from one to the other (with occasional wonkiness) I can quite assure you that one program is not mistaken for the other at any time.
Example #2 -- Websites. MySpace and Facebook are both social networking sites. They are not, however, interchangeable. One does not say one has a MySpace account when one, in fact, has a Facebook account, or vice versa. In the same way, while Hotmail may have been one of the first web-based email services, at no point did "hotmail" become the generic noun for a web-based email account. If you're on Yahoo, you say "I have a Yahoo account." If you have Gmail, you have a Gmail account. Et cetera.
Example #3 -- Open Source variations. This is sort of an expansion of point 2, specifically regarding the fact that other virtual spaces using the Second Life code are in the works at this point. You might be concerned that these other places will be generically referred to as "Second Life." You would be wrong. For example, this letter is being posted on LiveJournal. The source code for LiveJournal is also open source, and a number of other journaling services have sprung up to make use of it--JournalFen, InsaneJournal, DeadJournal, GreatestJournal and others. Here's the thing--if it's not on LiveJournal.com, nobody I know of calls it a LiveJournal. It's called a DeadJournal, or an InsaneJournal or, um, a JournalFen account, as the case may be. At most, there might be a reference to the fact that the LiveJournal source code is used, but that's about it. And, to my knowledge, this isn't because LiveJournal did a great deal of saber-rattling about enforcing their trademarks, but because it doesn't make sense to say you have a LiveJournal if you're actually on InsaneJournal.
Second Life is Second Life. Nothing else is going to be mistaken for it. If you want to lay the banhammer down on somebody who deliberately attempts to be mistaken for it, fine. But, really, do not worry that people blogging about it are going to get people confused about whether they're associated with you or not.
I have taken the legal disclaimer that I used on my Newbie Site and transferred it to the sidebar of this blog. I will also, with much grumbling, work on a redesign the heading of said Newbie Site so it no longer uses the artwork that you previously provided me with and urged me to use as long as I disclaimered it. I will operate under the assumption that this should be sufficient to appease your legal department unless otherwise informed directly.
Thank you and goodnight,
CyFishy Traveler
I understand that this is a bit of a difficult time for you. Rumors have it that you're trying to shine things up for an IPO, and between stabilizing the grid and appeasing your angry customer base, you've got quite a bit on your plate.
I know you want to clean house before the nice guests in the suits show up, but, let me tell you, flinging out the dirty bathwater and ignoring the screams of the infant you flung out with it is really not the way to go about it.
The lawyers who have been advising you on the trademark issue need to pull their heads out of the case history and pay a little attention to how things like this actually work. Because, at this point, much of what you're doing is solving a problem that you're not really in danger of having.
I can indeed understand that a site like talksecondlife could be inadvertently seen as having some kind of connection with you. I think you might want to unclench a bit on the SL business, but that's just me.
But insisting that people refer to "the Second Life world" and "the Second Life viewer" is incredibly pointless and just makes you look like you don't even know what the hell Second Life is.
I presume the fear is that "Second Life" will somehow become genericized the way "Xerox" and "Kleenex" have. This fear is absurdly unfounded, when you look at other examples of similar situations.
Example #1 -- Software programs in general. My fleshy self works in an office that uses both Word and WordPerfect for word processing. The preferred program is WordPerfect, but they reluctantly use Word when dealing with documents to be emailed to clients. While documents can be converted from one to the other (with occasional wonkiness) I can quite assure you that one program is not mistaken for the other at any time.
Example #2 -- Websites. MySpace and Facebook are both social networking sites. They are not, however, interchangeable. One does not say one has a MySpace account when one, in fact, has a Facebook account, or vice versa. In the same way, while Hotmail may have been one of the first web-based email services, at no point did "hotmail" become the generic noun for a web-based email account. If you're on Yahoo, you say "I have a Yahoo account." If you have Gmail, you have a Gmail account. Et cetera.
Example #3 -- Open Source variations. This is sort of an expansion of point 2, specifically regarding the fact that other virtual spaces using the Second Life code are in the works at this point. You might be concerned that these other places will be generically referred to as "Second Life." You would be wrong. For example, this letter is being posted on LiveJournal. The source code for LiveJournal is also open source, and a number of other journaling services have sprung up to make use of it--JournalFen, InsaneJournal, DeadJournal, GreatestJournal and others. Here's the thing--if it's not on LiveJournal.com, nobody I know of calls it a LiveJournal. It's called a DeadJournal, or an InsaneJournal or, um, a JournalFen account, as the case may be. At most, there might be a reference to the fact that the LiveJournal source code is used, but that's about it. And, to my knowledge, this isn't because LiveJournal did a great deal of saber-rattling about enforcing their trademarks, but because it doesn't make sense to say you have a LiveJournal if you're actually on InsaneJournal.
Second Life is Second Life. Nothing else is going to be mistaken for it. If you want to lay the banhammer down on somebody who deliberately attempts to be mistaken for it, fine. But, really, do not worry that people blogging about it are going to get people confused about whether they're associated with you or not.
I have taken the legal disclaimer that I used on my Newbie Site and transferred it to the sidebar of this blog. I will also, with much grumbling, work on a redesign the heading of said Newbie Site so it no longer uses the artwork that you previously provided me with and urged me to use as long as I disclaimered it. I will operate under the assumption that this should be sufficient to appease your legal department unless otherwise informed directly.
Thank you and goodnight,
CyFishy Traveler
