For sim or location owners... what would you do?

[Camille Yorcliffe]

So just a general advice question... I'll keep names out of it to avoid drama.

About three years ago I bought a couple sims in SL, and spent two years of my time building up a community there.  The community has been fairly successful, and I passed along the sim ownership to some other community members a year and a half ago, but I'm still very involved there and helping to organize the community.  This is a multi-sim community, and includes a number of smaller more, specific locations, many of which were named after the town (sort of like a town called Exampleville might have a building called Exampleville Public Library).  These venues are all owned by the town, but we occasionally have people offer -- and very occasionally even pay people or allow them to charge money -- to run activities in these town buildings.

About 9 months ago, when I was busy doing other things and not there much, one of the people who had been charging for an activity she conducted in a town building decided to set up her own business elsewhere to have the security of owning her own venue, charge a lot more money, hire paid staff, etc.  That's happened a few times, and we wish people well when this happens; it's out of place anyway in our public community buildings, since we aren't trying to run our own event or activity businesses here (though a few people do *pay* for parcels and run business on them)!  Problem: this person decided to take the building name (and therefore town name... remember Exampleville Public Library) with her when she went.  We communicated pretty clearly that this wasn't okay with us.  She also entered a partnership with another person, who has been working on creating more businesses in SL with our town name attached to them...

This isn't a clear-cut trademark-ish issue... yes it's a pretty unique town name, but it *does* exist in a few places in RL and we've even had a couple unrelated businesses in the last three years that have just happened to use the same name as our town, and we generally contacted them so we were all aware of the situation and were fine as long as they didn't claim or imply affiliation with us.  But this is the first time we've had someone deliberately claim to have "relocated" a building that still exists in our town, or try to create and spread new businesses with our town name attached to them aimed directly at taking over a popular community name for their own business.

We originally chose to ignore the issue, hoping it would go away.  We renamed that building in our town to avoid confusion.  A few weeks ago, though, we talked to someone building a whole new community that was named the same as ours.  Initially we thought it might be another coincidental name conflict, but it later turned out that they were encouraged to do so in an early partnership with the same people that had been using our community name deliberately.  Fortunately for us, that partnership dissolved because one of those people tried to take over this business as well, and they went separate ways, and this new group renamed their community when it became clear what had happened.  But this left us aware that this isn't stopping at just that one business.  Now the building and activity in our own town (which we renamed) has started to become more active again, and it's getting difficult trying to answer all the questions and clear up all the confusion as to why the building and activity still exists here when people were under the false impression that this unrelated business was affiliated with our community.  To top it all off, when we try to clarify that the new business is not related to our community, we're targeted with accusations of "slander" and various other threats.

I' m left wondering how to deal with all this.  Anyone handled something similar, or have any advice?

[Chelsea Malibu]

You seemed to weave the answer to your question within the question.  You are using a common name that is present in RL either all or in part.

You can trademark common names as part of a brand as long as it is not the entire brand.  Chelsea Malibu is a registered trademark though I could not just have Malibu Trademarked.

Also when the use varies, there are often considerations that can be applied. Apple is a common word but they where able to trademark it do to it's unique application of that word.

However, regardless of how it is translated in law has little to do with your course of action in SL which is nothing.  You must have been trademarked before they will do anything. If you trademarked now, you would not have the protection from First Use as it goes by date the trademark had been approved (which by the way can take up to 2 years).

  DMCA applies to digital creations and not the name of that creation.  Even on a copyrighted song or movie, I can also use the same name as it applied to another song or movie if that name has no trademark.  If the brand is trademarked, then I am fully protected.

In the end, it is clearly a "clear-cut trademark-ish issue" in that you don't have a case.

[Camille Yorcliffe]

Right, I wasn't asking for legal remedies... even if I had them available, I'm not interested in spending my life in court.  I was asking if anyone had any advice for how to deal with this within SL.  I highly doubt many people have trademarked their SL activity or parcel names.  So for those of you who might have run into this, what strategies might you use to communicate with people, make the distinction clear, etc. without turning everything into a bunch of drama?  So again, any lessons learned from anyone would be very welcome.

[Knowl Paine]

Founding a Second Life Group with the name you wish to use in SL will secure the Group's right of use for that name in SL. 

The name game is played everywhere, inside of SL and outside of SL.

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Knowl Paine wrote:

Founding a Second Life Group with the name you wish to use in SL will secure the Group's right of use for that name in SL. 

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Creating a group, as you described, doesn't secure anything in SL, unless you are willing to move into the RL legal realms, and the OP isn't interested in doing that. LL aren't interested in things like this, so all that creating a group can do is provide something to show a date for first use of a name, and that's only useful outside SL, and only if there is RL action in the trademark area. And even then, where can you see the group's creation date to demonstrate first use? Maybe it's in the group's webpage, but it's not in the group's inworld info box.

I know that LL isn't interested because, after I'd been trading in low prim furniture as "Prim Savers" for years, a guy decided to start up in low prim furniture and use my business name. When somebody told me what he was doing and I saw it for myself, I contacted LL but they didn't even reply. They only became interested when the guy decided to apply for a trademark on the name. They told me what he was doing straight away (because the idiot thought an application gave him rights ), and I could have prevented it, but I was already allowing the store to fade away naturally before he even started up, so I wasn't going to fork out money for something I wasn't intending to keep. (It costs $300 to defend against a trademark application.)

So a group is meaningless in SL as far as business names are concerned. The only thing that isn't meaningless is getting a trademark on the name.

 

@the OP

What I would do in your situation is write a notecard, telling the overview story. Something like (intensely potted), We were using the name for years and one of our workers/helpers set up on their own, and used the same name. We are nothing to do with that organisation. And give it to anyone who is interested.

LL isn't interested in such things, and you don't want to pursue it outside of SL (legally), so there's not much you can do, except use a notecard to make the explaining of it easier when it comes up.

[Camille Yorcliffe]

Thanks, that pretty much confirms my experience then; sad, but it is what it is.  I definitely have explained this many times to people who have asked me, but I've always been hesitant to set up any kind of official explanation in a notecard giver or something because I'm not exactly keen to make this drama a centerpoint of the community.  I'm apparently also not allowed to clarify the situation on SL Forums, as posts doing so are now being reported and deleted as "Interpersonal Disputes or Personal Negative Commentary" by moderators.

One thing I will say for Linden Labs, they at least stepped in a while back, in response to an AR, and told the new establishment that they could not use (again with the fake names) "The Original Exampleville Community" as their slogan in advertising and such.  So okay, on with the small battles and one-on-one communication to clear up the confusion.

[Knowl Paine]

Second Life does not allow duplicate registration for SL Group names. In that sense, Founding a Group in SL will secure use of that name in SL.

I realize that some Residents have yet to understand that one cannot create an SL Group using another Company's name, logo or trademark; I don't believe the OP is one of those Residents. (that's why I kept it short) :matte-motes-smile:

 

To: OP,

Located every Town in America with that name and ask each Mayor or Town Clerk if you could be an Offical Second Life Host for that Town.

Create a historical Society.

Form an LLC.

 

I would follow Phil's advice, revise your Group's Charter (tags, titles, notecards, objects, ect.) to better reflect who your Group is in SL.

 

 

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

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Knowl Paine wrote:

Second Life does not allow duplicate registration for SL Group names. In that sense, Founding a Group in SL will secure use of that name in SL.

I realize that some Residents have yet to understand that one cannot create an SL Group using another Company's name, logo or trademark; I don't believe the OP is one of those Residents. (that's why I kept it short) :matte-motes-smile:

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That's right. An identically named group can't be created, but creating a group with the desired business name doesn't secure any rights in SL, other than the right to that name for the group. It doesn't prevent other people from using the business name for their own businesses, and LL won't stop them.

For a group, there's nothing to stop someone else from using a variation of the group's name. For instance, when I started my "Prim Savers" store, I created the group, "Prim Savers Group". "Prim Savers" had already been taken for a temp rezzer thing. I don't know what group name the guy who stole my name uses but it could be something like "The Prim Savers Group" (just adding "The" on the front), and there's nothing that LL will do about it. I have a stack of groups (variations) with "Prim Savers" in their names but they were created for something entirely different.

So what you said about securing the use of the name in SL is technically correct but it was misleading. It only secures it as a group name for that particular variation, but does nothing at all towards the exclusivity of a business name in SL. The only way that can happen is the use of RL legal proceedings.

[Phil Deakins]

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Camille Yorcliffe wrote:

Thanks, that pretty much confirms my experience then; sad, but it is what it is.  I definitely have explained this many times to people who have asked me, but I've always been hesitant to set up any kind of official explanation in a notecard giver or something because I'm not exactly keen to make this drama a centerpoint of the community.

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It is sad, I agree. The world has many 'lesser-minded' people in it, who are happy to take advantage of others by riding on their backs, even at the others' expense, and SL is no different in that respect. The guy who took my business name actually gloated to people when he was eventually granted the trademark and I had to change my name. The world does contain people like that, and SL is no different.

I wouldn't suggest a notecard giver though. I meant a prepared notecard in your inventory, and give it when somebody asks about the subject. I definitely wouldn't force it on people. In my situation, what I did was place a large sign near the store's landing point, stating that "Prim Savers is now Prim Misers" which is followed by "We were Prim Savers for 4 years from 2007 but, due to the unscrupulous actions of a resident, we changed our name on May 12th 2011 to Prim Misers. The well-known Prim Savers is now Prim Misers."

Ironically, when I started the store, I wanted to use the name "Prim Misers" rather than "Prim Savers". At the time, "prim saver" was sometimes used to mean a temp rezzer, and using it as the store name could have given the wrong understanding. But I'd mistakenly thought that americans would spell it with a "z" - Prim Mizers - and wouldn't find the store if they searched on the name. Now I'm using my first choice name

[Camille Yorcliffe]

Exactly right, we certainly have a gazillion groups with the town name, "Friends of Exampleville", "Exampleville Town Council", and a good half dozen more for more specific activities.  But having multiple groups named "Exampleville" something or other doesn't stop someone else from creating more with any number of variations: "Exampleville Library", "Exampleville Public Library", "Exampleville Town Library"...

In this case, though, I did something stupider.  When I passed on the sim a little over a year ago to take a break from SL, I removed myself as the group owner before adding the new owner... and the person who'd been running the activity had been made an owner at some point (we trusted her at the time), and refused to add the new sim owner to the group.  Yeah, yeah, I know, dumb newbie mistake I guess.  All I can say is, at the time we felt like we were a close community that could trust and rely on each other.