Tim’s back from vacation, and his thoughtful post is here. For anyone who was quick to judge this whole thing, I’d encourage you to read it.
Web 2 Conference TM Issue: Tim Responds
Tim's back from vacation, and his thoughtful post is here. For anyone who was quick to judge this whole thing, I'd encourage you to read it….
I know he is unhappy with the bologosphere on this (and it must have been a difficult experience), but I wonder if they would have been willing to “work out a deal” had this not been brought to people’s attention.
It also seems very reasonable to me for the the group to post the letter. I am not sure why he wants an apology from them (that is what I got, anyhow). They did make it seem more like him than the larger company in question (and maybe that was not so good), but his staff should be on this, and if they OK a cease and desist letter, then he wants them to reach out to him personally . . . that is hard when they already chose to take the legal route. I think the group did the right thing (other bloggers may have over-reacted) and do not see them needing to apologize. Maybe some people in the blog world do, but what did you think, bloggers would choose the large corp with a slew of lawyers over the small non-profit? They tend to veer on the side of the underdog.
Cory Doctorow spoke at a non-O’Reilly ‘Web 2.0 Conference’ in Brighton, UK, last year. Mesh, in Canada are holding a ‘Web 2.0 Conference’. Enterprise Ireland has held a ‘Web 2.0 Conference’.
So – CMP is not properly protecting its supposed trademark because it hasn’t sent C&D notices to these three. And until now CMP didn’t let anyone know it had applied for a trademark.
Great business practice.
How Specific and General is the Patent.
Since Web 2.0 is very generic concept- would the patent cover Web 2 or Web TWO or Web II or WWW 2.0 or even Web 3.0?
There is always a concern about how far entities will go to protect an intellectual property concept – and how far reaching they PERCEIVE that concept to be.
Take for example GOOGLE, it had gotten to the point of suggesting that they inherently own all “oogle” domains.
But what new problems will arise now that it is becoming a “VERB”? (like XEROX has)
ALSO, look at Yahoo using “My Web 2.0 BETA” as their title for
myweb2.search.yahoo.com
So – CMP is not properly protecting its supposed trademark because it hasn’t sent C&D notices to these three. And until now CMP didn’t let anyone know it had applied for a trademark.Sohbet