There’s a tempest out there in blog land about my partners’ use of the “bigfoot letter” tactic in defending their Web 2.0 trademark as it relates to conferences. Many of my readers are asking about it. I’m going to wait to comment on this in detail till I talk to Tim, who is on vacation and out of touch this week, but in short, I think this response from O’Reilly is pretty good. They screwed up by not first having a conversation with the folks in Ireland, and they relented on forcing the trademark issue right away. I’m sure Tim will have more to say about it, as it happened while he was gone, and I want to talk to him before I dive too deep. Meanwhile, this is not some evil plot to “own” Web 2.0. It’s narrowly limited to its use as a trademark for conferences. Remember, Web 2.0 is also about having a business that works. And not protecting your trademarks is simply bad business practice.
Update: Lots of comments, and also, remember that Tim is really offline, and has no idea this has happened. I want to hear from him, but meanwhile, Cory at BB has weighed in, and I like what he has to say.