I’ve been staying out of this mess with Linden Lab’s trademark shenanigans, mostly because there’s nothing to gain really.  They have a lawyer or probably lawyers on retainer and they have to do something.  So, modifying the usage of their name and trademarks is something for the lawyers to do.   From LL’s standpoint, it might be worth something in the future, so it’s worth protecting.

I’m not a lawyer, but I think most of the bloggers are pretty immune to this whole mess as they probably fall under the category of reporters.  You don’t see little TM’s and disclaimers on CNN’s webpages when they report on other companies, do you?

On the flip side, they’re probably fully within their rights to protect their name from being used by other companies for financial gain.  This makes sense.  If you were running a company, you’d want the same protection.  So companies like SLExchange might find themselves in trouble.  Trademarks are to prevent consume confusion, and that makes sense.  Is SLExchange owned or run by Linden Labs?  No.  Same thing with the whole SLart silliness.

That’s probably why Onrez has the name it does, it doesn’t infringe.  This does bring up an interesting point that I hadn’t considered when I started this blog.  I might have a personal problem with my name.  Now, Veyron is a French surname, and I suppose I could one could argue it’s generic.  But it is probably inevitable a bored VW lawyer is going to nail me.  If not today, eventually.  It’s like gravity.  I suppose other Avatars might have similar problems, who knows.

It’s also interesting to note that lawyers by their nature are bullies.  They usually try to avoid court, since once you land in court everything is in play.  There is no defined outcome.  Take for example this reply to Monster Cable’s threats to a smaller company.  My guess is Monster will go away.  They want an easy victim, not one that will fight.

What does surprise me is that Linden Labs continues to make public relations faux pas.  Pretty much with every plan, statement or policy change for the last year they have managed to not only get both feet in their mouth but generally blow one foot off just before insertion.

I have noticed a trend though.  Linden Lab’s has been very consistent.  Take for example the number of “issues” in the last month.  What it seems to me is that the grid starts to really fall apart at high concurrency loads.  What happened to the “contingency” plans from last year?  Restricting uses to the true addicts.  :)  I can’t ever recall it happening.  Ah, but then it would be inconsistent if we followed through on something.  Which I guess is where the trademark policy will go.

Oh well.

-Veyron