Comments on: Why Trademarks Are Important

By: Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:08:37 +0000

You are quite correct, Dadingah. I learned many things about international law over the years. China presents both an opportunity (one billion customers, right?) and a need to be cautious, know the people and understand the culture and business practices.
For those who wish to learn more, I wrote a couple of posts on China based upon conversations with Dr. James Chan at Conversation Agent.

By: Dadingah Ling

Dadingah Ling — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:01:00 +0000

Prior art is important in how the US deals with trademark rights – but beware if you are seeking protection globally – many other nations do not follow the same “common law” privileges that we have in the US. In many countries, like for instance China I believe, you don’t have any tm protection until you complete the local registration process (and pay the piper).

By: Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:30:52 +0000

@Erin – welcome to the MarketingProfs DailyFix. An absolutely useful source of marketing information on practices and case studies.
@David – you are quite correct. Prior art use is very important. I have a friend who came up with the issue for his company a few years ago and he was able to demonstrate that very point easily. To go back to Swth Godin, he has a few posts in his book “Small is the New Big” where he talks about using original names. Of course, using your own name can sometimes be not original if someone else has the same name.
@Todd – thank you for linking. Many bloggers start a blog and build equity in a brand, they should think about protecting their hard work.

By: Todd Jordan

Todd Jordan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:43:42 +0000

Great post. You’ve reminded me again how important what we as bloggers and social media contributors create has value and is worth protecting.
Thanks.

By: David Tillinger

David Tillinger — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:16:30 +0000

One of the things you need to be careful about is a rule that some people don’t know about trademarks: Having a mark in use is more important than registration. Using Valeria’s main site as an example(presuming for the sake of this hypothetical that she hadn’t registered the name) her use of the term “Conversation Agent” in commerce, would trump a later registered name.
The use of the mark in commerce, even unregistered, establishes a superior claim to a later registrant. There is a downside to this, though. If someone has a use of your mark prior to you establishing it, then they have the superior claim, even if they’ve done nothing with it. So going back to the example of Valeria’s site name, if someone had a site they hadn’t touched in 10 years, but was called conversation agency and that site predated Valeria’s, they would technically have the superior claim.
The best bet to avoid this problem is to choose a unique name, research it to make sure there are no other people using it in commerce and then register it before beginning to establish it in the marketplace.

By: Erin C.

Erin C. — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:41:09 +0000

I’m fairly new to the Marketing Profs website…looks like it’s another website I’m going to have to start going to daily!
My daily schedule:
1. Get out of bed- get lap top
2. Go back to bed and answer emails for an hour (I tele-commute)
3. Make coffee
4. Log on to Myspace, Facebook, CNN, NYTimes, Gmail and begin day.
5. Now I’m must add Marketing Profs to the list.
Way to go!
-Erin

By: Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:47:06 +0000

Welcome to the conversation, Andrew. The Brand Chef, what a delicious and memorable name to have!
Thank you for the tip.
For readers: copy just the portion of the URL without the parentheses and period.

By: Valeria Maltoni

Valeria Maltoni — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:31:33 +0000

@Cam –field research! I like that. Yes, one cannot help but wonder. It is a delicate balance to strike between spreading ideas and wanting to share and protecting the fruit of your labor.
@John — aren’t they precious? And I bet those splogs get good ranking, too. I have the same happen to me. As well as the posts being washed through Google translator. You may want to take a look at The Blog Herald. Jonathan Bailey writes about legal issues there.

By: Andrew B. Clark

Andrew B. Clark — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:13:25 +0000

I too noticed the conversation going on about Seth’s trademark issue. I was impressed, if not even surprised with the style and professionalism that it’s being handled by Seth. I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.
Another great resource for trademark information is Brett Trout’s blog ( http://blog.bretttrout.com). There, he covers a lot of the points made above.
Great information, Valeria. Thank you for bringing an often forgotten subject to the front.
Keep Cooking!
Andrew

By: John Whiteside

John Whiteside — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:23:50 +0000

I haven’t had trademark issues, but regularly have those strange spam blogs scrape content. It usually appears with some incorrect name (“Bill had a great post about….”) and then lifts part of the post content, with a link back (which is how I find them).
I gave up on trying to contact site operators or hosting companies; these are obviously shady outfits, usually hosted offshore. I tried submitting a complaint to Google (these are Adsense pay per click plays) but they are utterly unresponsive.
It just bugs me. Anybody found a way to deal with this?

By: Cam Beck

Cam Beck — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:22:43 +0000

I was looking at my favorite coffee cup this weekend, which displays a quote, with proper attribution, to Albert Einstein.
Right next to his name were those two little letters that reflect the sad state of affairs we are in — that lawyers have too much time on their hands: TM
I took some pictures and will be posting on it soon.