Threats due to official LL surname........

[Perrie Juran]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

Al those other Catnaps in SL are in for it now.

/wheremahlawyerz@?

 

I think I'll trademark the name 'BabyGirl' in SL, and then send all the avatars on XXX sims with that name a demand for a one time 1L liscense.

I'll be able to afford buying ALL of Blake Sea in about a day.

And then I will send the rest of the notices, to the female avatars with that name - and have enough to buy the entire rest of SL.

 

Yeah... trademarking a common name. Not going to work.

 

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How about GossipGirl?

There were 151,096 registrations with that name! 

What a goldmine that would be.

http://slnamewatch.com/index.php?action=list_records&status_filter=heritage&sort_order=DESC&order_by=last_name&cur_page=72

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Using TESS [Trademark Electronic Search System] I looked up "Foulsbane" and guess what, it is not listed in any capacity or status whatsoever.

Just go on and enjoy your SL name in all its glory!

FYI - As a surname it has a lot of public use in novels by a few authors and in many games. Thus the original use claim is not possible. Even if a product existed where the name allowed a limited service mark, it would only be enforceable in the case where a similar class of product tried to use the same product name.

The imbecile's claim is based on his total lack of knowledge of how trademark and service marks works in the U.S. and his bluff that you don't know this either. He can't copyright the product and protect the name as the "Foulsbane" performance algorithm since this is a publicly used surname. He can call it that but it can never be used as a copyrighted product name. Further he could have registered  a service mark for his product but service marks are issued to a narrowly defined class of uses. [e.g. I can register a service mark for my new hair regrowth product named "Foulsbane" - this would not cross-over the product boundary threshold for a performance algorithm "Foulsbane". ]

[Perrie Juran]

I should have checked before while I was there.

1672 registrations with Foulsbaine.

All he needs to do is find one idiot willing to 'settle' and he is ahead.

 

http://slnamewatch.com/index.php?action=list_records&status_filter=heritage&sort_order=DESC&order_by=last_name&cur_page=77

[Phoebe Avro]

Abuse report the sender of the note card and they may well get banned from SL

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I agree.  AR him.

[steph Arnott]

All legacy names are owned by Linden Labs and as such can be taken away at their discretion.The only reason they were not was the cost.

[Countess Foulsbane]

Apparently the pair are back in business......well attempting to extort business anyway.

Just received a second notecard (identical to 1st).

Also received an IM from another Foulsbane that had also received the notecard and wondered what we should do.

 

AR'd the pair of them, including a screen shot of the full notecard, and a link to the earlier time in 2010 when they attempted the same thing.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Your reply should be...

Yo Imbecile,

If you have an issue with the use of a publicly available surname "Foulsbane" take it up with:

1) Linden Lab

2) All the authors who have used the surname in their books since at least 1977 starting with Stephen Donaldson, who published "Lord Foul's Bane" in that year.

3) The copyright office which has no record of your filing for a copyright [not possible in your context] or a service or trade mark application pending.

If you send me any other communications I will forward your extortion attempts to the FBI for resolution and possible prosecution.

Signed,

 

 

kml: Edited to add the suggested reference.

 

 

[Cheshyr Pontchartrain]

Well said, Karen.  And not to forget Stephen Donaldson, who published "Lord Foul's Bane" in 1977, and presumably the inspiration for Linden Lab's choice of surname.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

Al those other Catnaps in SL are in for it now.

/wheremahlawyerz@?

 

Yeah... trademarking a common name. Not going to work.

 

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How about GossipGirl?

There were 151,096 registrations with that name! 

What a goldmine that would be.

http://slnamewatch.com/index.php?action=list_records&status_filter=heritage&sort_order=DESC&order_by=last_name&cur_page=72

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That one is a sort of unique counter argument in the SL context actually. That name was added to SL as part of a promotion the TV show was doing in SL. They were the last mainstream venue to be duped into believing SL was culturally relevant. It was a short run, during the promotion - and lots of fans of GossipGirl came here, registered, likely went 'WTF' and left.

- But that does make it one, maybe the only, SL name for which I suspect there is an agreement recognizing it as a trademarked name and not a 'parody' or reasonable use or common name.

 That said, SL gets the last laugh on relevancy there. GossipGirl, a short lived fad TV show, is essentially gone with no impact on the cultural legacy.

[Perrie Juran]

 

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

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How about GossipGirl?

 That said, SL gets the last laugh on relevancy there. GossipGirl, a short lived fad TV show, is essentially gone with no impact on the cultural legacy.

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It was the NUMBER ONE most picked name.  This is the Top 10.

http://slnamewatch.com/index.php?action=list_records&status_filter=heritage&sort_order=DESC&order_by=usage_count

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Proudly Beams....

 

to this day I still wonder why the name KarenMichelle was prevented from ever being created again even after the change to the fixed "Resident" surname. Can I Trademark or Service mark me? -

[Aislin Ceawlin]

Perrie,

The Gossipgirl names were actually sanctioned by W.B. and there was a sim designed to mimic the style of the show. One of my best friends was the W.B. representative inworld. (I helped her decorate some of the "GossipGirl" homes...yay :matte-motes-big-grin:) 

Edited to replace "grid" with "sim"

[Aislin Ceawlin]

OH! I missed PussyCat's reply!...What she said...lol!

[TundraFire Nightfire]

Griefers and trolls have to evolve their tactics at some point because the old annoyances don't work anymore.  I'm guessing that the notecards are a new form of griefing/trolling.

I never respond to griefers inworld. I just ban them from my property and block them from contacting me ever again.  If this happened to me, I'd notify LL about it, too.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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TundraFire Nightfire wrote:

Griefers and trolls have to evolve their tactics at some point because the old annoyances don't work anymore.  I'm guessing that the notecards are a new form of griefing/trolling.

---

Well as Pierre noted upthread. If a name is big enough - you get a few hits in there somewhere.

Consider the "Hey did you just bump into me, OMG lol, I've been away SL for so long, sorry must be lag. Can you give me 3-billion linden so I can buy some shoes?" bot...

- We "All" know about it...

But it still works...

Because not everyone is one of us "all"...

 

And of course, almost weekly the forums here have a report of a brand new hacker/bot/griefer scheme to totally ruin your avatar, steal your lindens, eat your dog, and foreclose on your RL house... which... most of us recognize as the same old same old... yet the poster will sit there and camp out a dozen pages of flaming everyone trying to point out that NO, this is not the hacker/bot/griefer of before, but a new scheme...

- Which BTW in those cases... the thread itself is likely the attack: a forum troll. Because... that still works.

[Phil Deakins]

I've only read the first page of posts in this thread so I don't know if what I'm about to write has already been written, but....

It's an interesting question. Suppose someone with an LL issued, not-RL word or name, surname, such as Foulsbane, gets a trademark on it. Could s/he then legally prevent the word/name being used in SL? My thinking is no. But my thinking is that s/he could prevent the word/name being used as a business name, and probably even as part of a business name.

The person who contacted you doesn't appear to have a trademark on the word/name, or s/he would have said so, so do as everyone has suggested and ignore the person, but it's an interesting question.

 

ETA: I've now read the rest of the thread and realise that 'foulsbane' was previously known. But the same interesting question still applies. I also read that there is no trademark on that word and it may be possible to get one.

[Perrie Juran]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I've only read the first page of posts in this thread so I don't know if what I'm about to write has already been written, but....

It's an interesting question. Suppose someone with an LL issued, not-RL word or name, surname, such as Foulsbane, gets a trademark on it. Could s/he then legally prevent the word/name being used in SL? My thinking is no. But my thinking is that s/he could prevent the word/name being used as a business name, and probably even as part of a business name.

The person who contacted you doesn't appear to have a trademark on the word/name, or s/he would have said so, so do as everyone has suggested and ignore the person, but it's an interesting question.

 

ETA: I've now read the rest of the thread and realise that 'foulsbane' was previously known. But the same interesting question still applies. I also read that there is no trademark on that word and it may be possible to get one.

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Other Potential Grounds for the USPTO to Refuse Registration

The USPTO will also refuse registration of a proposed mark for many other reasons, including but

not limited to the mark being: a surname; geographically descriptive of the origin of the goods/

services; disparaging or offensive; a foreign term that translates to a descriptive or generic term; an

individual’s name or likeness;

http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp

[Perrie Juran]

And this will be Canada, which is very similar to the U.S.

"But McDonald is a common name; a 411.ca search pulls up nearly 10,000 results in Canada and there are a further 22,000 MacDonalds. Does the ruling suggest that if one of these McDonalds or MacDonalds wished to open a restaurant, they would be unable to trade under their family name?

No, says Simpson, explaining that a registered trademark doesn’t prevent people from making a bona fide use of their name as a trade name under s. 20(1)(a) of the Trade-marks Act.

More generally, a person can’t register a surname unless it has already acquired a secondary meaning or become distinctive as a trade source under s. 12 of the act."

http://www.lawtimesnews.com/201309233471/focus-on/focus-does-mcdonald-s-trademark-extend-to-use-of-word-mac

[Pussycat Catnap]

So the takeaway here is that we should all head down to the local RL courthouse and change our surnames to Microsoft, Google, Android, or Samsung.

Then start a new 'family' business.

[Perrie Juran]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

So the takeaway here is that we should all head down to the local RL courthouse and change our surnames to Microsoft, Google, Android, or Samsung.

Then start a new 'family' business.

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Maybe.  Or Maybe Not.

I know wiki is not the 'final authority,' but:

"In nearly all states, a person cannot choose a name that is intended to mislead (such as adopting a celebrity's name), that is intentionally confusing, or that incites violence; nor can one adopt, as a name, a racial slur, a threat, or an obscenity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_change

 

In other words, you could not change your name to "F*ckMicrosoft." 

 

[Phil Deakins]

But...

To the best of my knowledge, 'Foulsbane' is not an RL name, and it's not even an accepted RL word (it probably doesn't appear in any dictiionary although it has been written in the past). If it's not, then it could be trademarked as long as anyone already using it doesn't file an objection. A trademark on it wouldn't make any difference at all to those who have that SL surname, but it's probable, imo, that they wouldn't be able to use it as all or part of a business name.

It would be interesting to know whether or not the trademark office accepts an invented name in a virtual world as being an actual name, and treating it as such. I doubt that it would be accepted.

[Phil Deakins]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

So the takeaway here is that we should all head down to the local RL courthouse and change our surnames to Microsoft, Google, Android, or Samsung.

Then start a new 'family' business.

---

Imo, unless you start up in the same business field, you'd be ok doing that with Android because it's a standard English word, but not with Google or Microsoft because those companies invented those words. I've no idea about Samsung though.

Trivia: The founders named their search engine 'Google' because they coukldn't spell the intended word. They intended calling it 'Googol' (a 1 with 100 zeros after it) but they spelt it wrong. If they'd spelt it right, you'd be ok changing your name to Googol and starting a family business with the name, as long as it isn't in the same field - imo.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

But...

To the best of my knowledge, 'Foulsbane' is not an RL name, and it's not even an accepted RL word (it probably doesn't appear in any dictiionary although it has been written in the past). If it's not, then it could be trademarked as long as anyone already using it doesn't file an objection. A trademark on it wouldn't make any difference at all to those who have that SL surname, but it's probable, imo, that they wouldn't be able to use it as all or part of a business name.

It would be interesting to know whether or not the trademark office accept a name in a virtual world as being an actual name, and treating it as such. I doubt that it would be accepted.

---

 

Actually a trademarked name can be used by more than one business if the businesses are different.  For example Apple. One company makes electronics and the other makes music recordings.

[Phil Deakins]

I'm sure you'll find that no trademark exists on the single word 'apple'.

I wrote about 'not in the same field' in my reply to Pussycat, although that was about names. 'Apple' is a common english word and can't be trademarked, so, imo, anyone can use it as long as it's not in the same field. 'Apple Computers', and things like that, can be trademarked, but not 'apple' on its own.