On Saturday 21 April 2007 01:10, Craig Mullins wrote:
> Does anyone know how much control a company can have over their
> trademarks and them being put on a web site. Any attorneys in the
> group?
I'm not a lawyer, but I know if it's their legal trademark, they have
control over it. That's the point. Mercedes wants you to think of
Mercedes when you see a three pointed star with a circle around it.
Zenith wants you to associate their stylized Z with them. Microsoft
wants you to associate that multi-colored butterfly with their programs
and so on. They also have to aggressively defend it and prove it. For
example, "Jeep" is a trademark of what was AMC but is now owned by
Chrysler. When I used to get Writer's Digest, I'd see ads reminding
people that a Jeep was made by Chrysler, it was not a generic term for
a 4WD type of vehicle. I think at one point escalator and aspirin were
trademarks that were overused and became generic. That's why Xerox
fights to keep people from saying, "I'll xerox this." It would be
rough on them if they lost the right to keep other companies from using
their name and trademark.
I learned about this from a few articles I read on trademarks, back when
I was a writer and needed to know what I could easily use, and as a
business owner looking into what I could and could not do and what
control I'd have over my own trademarks.
> I am (I think was now) a distributor for Shaklee and I do search
> engine optimization as my career.
>
> I was talking to people that use Shaklee products and asking for them
> to write me a review about the product and posting it on my web site.
> Shaklee said I can't do that and shut down my Shaklee web site
> (within the hour) and didn't tell me it was shut down. They still
> haven't told me anything...
When you say they shut it down, did they host it, or was it hosted
elsewhere? There is actually a provision in the DMCA that has been
used against at least one company for shutting down a site when it
should not be shut down. Your hosting comapny should have contacted
you or verified it was in violation before shutting the site down -- at
least if you're in the US. Some silly thing we used to have in this
country about innocent until proven guilty.
On the other hand, do you really want to do business with this kind of
company, now that they've shown how nasty they can be and how quickly
they can turn on you.
> Had this expensive advertising campaign going and everyone was
> getting a page not found error...
>
> How can they be 50 years old and get away with this? They said I can
> never under any circumstances use the name shaklee, any employees
> name working for shaklee, or any shaklee product name on a web site,
> EVER.
It depends on how you were using names and such. They can't block use
of all employee names, unless they have some agreement with employees
or you were using them in the context of Shaklee.
Again, do you really want to let a company like this have that kind of
control over a business you work hard to set up and count on for
income?
Hal
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