Linden Lab Gets Legal With Helpful Resource On Using Second Life For Education
from the trademark-abuse dept
Chalk up another victory for trademark bullying. Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, apparently just got around to registering certain Second Life trademarks, but wasted no time using them to shove around at least one site that was only helping to get more people to use Second Life. Game Politics points us to the news that the operator of the Second Life in Education Wiki was on the receiving end of a legal nastygram. This is, frankly, dumb.The site has been around for over two years without an issue, and helps educators better understand ways to use Second Life as a tool for education. It's clearly put together outside of the auspices of Linden Lab, but is a useful tool for educators who want to use the virtual world. It's the sort of thing Linden Lab should be encouraging. No "moron in a hurry" would go to the wiki and think that it was run by Linden Lab. Linden Lab's lawyers will, of course, claim that they have to monitor uses of their marks to avoid it going generic, but that's a cop out. They do not need to go after anyone who uses the mark in any way. In a case like this, where it's clearly an educational tool, not being used to describe a different or competing platform, there's no issue. Still, the operator of the site has decided it's not worth fighting, and will be changing the name of the site and moving it to a different domain. Too bad. Another win for needless trademark bullying.
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Filed Under: educational resource, second life, second life for education, trademark, wiki
Companies: linden lab
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Interesting, I'll have to look into that.
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Oh, never mind
But, now that we see they have and will use their legal teeth, it's never going to happen. Shame, with the expanding adoption of broadband, it could have worked.
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Linden Lab comments
- Linden Lab's PR team
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Re: Linden Lab comments
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Re: Linden Lab comments
This is sort of like a real estate developer trying to promote their development while simultaneously trying to prevent anyone else from talking about it. In short, it's stupid, regardless of what trademark law says.
Why the frak do you need to 'own' "SL?" Are you giving "X-Street SL" any shit? Can I write a forum post about SL(tm)?
Jeebus, dude. I just got into "Deuxim Vie". Don't make me hate you.
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Re: Re: Linden Lab comments
That's because Linden Labs owns X-Street SL
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The vagueness of the general "protect intellectual property" statement repeated in the response makes me uncomfortable; how does Linden Labs determine when "protecting intellectual property" is appropriate or not appropriate? Does Linden educate on fair use or how and when it is appropriate to use trademarked materials?
I question whether this particular action was necessary at all.
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or it could have been a win win
Mark is protected from the generic argument, and a useful tool guiding people to use the LL product is encouraged.
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Linden Lab Gets Legal With Helpful Resource On Using Second Life For Education
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Actually they do have to go after TM infractions
The "SL" mark is a different story entirely. That's a claim coming from common usage that existed BEFORE Linden Labs starting actively using it themselves. I think they are on shaky ground -- but legal bullying may rule the day on it.
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Re: Actually they do have to go after TM infractions
People always say that, but they almost always get the facts wrong. Yes, you need to actively protect it -- but just for cases where there might be confusion or which could potentially make the term generic.
That's not true here. Nothing about this usage would make the term generic. It was referring to the official Second Life -- not some generic virtual world.
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Re: Re: Actually they do have to go after TM infractions
And that's the downside of having staff lawyers who are trying to prove they're relevant.
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Paid Educational Consultants, Not Victims of Bullies
LL didn't just register these marks yesterday -- they registered them 18 months ago and notified the community on their blog repeatedly and there were extensive conversations about it. There was a means to register inworld use of the term "SL" but it was made clear that "Second Life" and "SL" could not be used on third-party websites or products because these terms were trademarked. And it's *ok* to trademark intellectual property.
In fact, there were several very high-profile cases in the last year of SL community businesses that used to have "SL" in their names and changed them due to this announcement. The independent online newspaper "Second Life Herald" changed to the "Alphaville Herald". The shopping site SLexchange.com changed to Xstreet and then was bought out by Linden Lab and became XStreetsl.com. The SL educators were well aware of these developments; they just thought they were exempt because they're special.
I was one of many residents that changed my site formerly using these terms. Why not? I expect LL to protect the copyright of me and my tenants, and I see no reason why I shouldn't respect theirs.
It's HUGELY misleading to portray the education wiki as somehow some exclusively non-profit and non-commercial enterprise. Nothing of the kind. Many of the people calling themselves "educators" in SL in fact are *paid consultants* in sole proprietor or small business hustling their consulting around the software -- some of them very highly paid -- who make a *business* selling educational software and "solutions". They have a vested interest as a class to keep their work tools free or low cost, so they constitute a very aggressive lobby on behalf of open-source and against this trademark effort, but they're hiding behind "service to the community".
There are also educational insitutions in SL that in fact have HUGE grants from the government or private foundations to perform their projects in SL and they also have *a vested interest* in having all the software, knowledge bases, content, etc. be free so that they can maximize *their grants and their own position*.
This is not a tale of a victim of some brutal and rapacious and indifferent company harming innocent volunteers in non-profits. It's a story of fiercely competing businesses using the slogan of education around consulting services more than anything else.
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Re: Paid Educational Consultants, Not Victims of Bullies
Hmm. Do you understand that copyright and trademarks are two totally different things?
And yes, there are plenty of cases of trademark assertion that I approve of: those where there's genuine confusion or clear "passing off" or appropriation. None of that is true in this case.
We saw TechDirt before banging on SL over the question of "bulk permissions," and your flogging of that issue did a great deal of harm in inciting a determined minority of copyleftist coders to demand bulk permissions, which led to bugs that caused theft exploits, and created a climate of impunity only increasing the theft of IP in SL.
I have no idea what this references, but anyone who claims that you can "steal" IP clearly has no idea what they're talking about. Come back when you've learned something.
It's HUGELY misleading to portray the education wiki as somehow some exclusively non-profit and non-commercial enterprise. Nothing of the kind. Many of the people calling themselves "educators" in SL in fact are *paid consultants* in sole proprietor or small business hustling their consulting around the software -- some of them very highly paid -- who make a *business* selling educational software and "solutions". They have a vested interest as a class to keep their work tools free or low cost, so they constitute a very aggressive lobby on behalf of open-source and against this trademark effort, but they're hiding behind "service to the community".
Um. That's all very nice, but doesn't change the point. Nothing about this wiki had it passing itself off as being run or sponsored or endorsed by SL. There was no confusion, thus there should be no trademark issue.
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