inSL™: Your World. Your Imagination. Our trademark.
March 25, 2008 1:09 amA quick lesson, which we all seem to have to learn:
| ALT + 0174 | makes ® | ALT + 0153 | makes ™ |
(this works for in-world chat too)
Why do we need it? Ah, Linden Lab® changed trademark policy. Where they used to encourage us to post a nice little eye-in-hand Second Life® virtual world logo on top of our headers, they now say that is a no go. Avatars of the Second Life® unite, throw all your existing textures, blog headers, real life books even that contain the eye-in-hand logo on a pile and rezz a fire. Do take the effort to create new ones though, containing the following logo, that shows we are inSL™. I feel a bit confused though, and have no urge to stick it on this blog. After all, my blog is ‘about SL’ or ‘on SL’ but now where inSL™. Html on a prim does not function well enough for that yet.
Anyway, if you want to sign up for inSL™ logo use, go here. Be aware though, it is only to be used on a white background. Let’s talk about boring. And ‘If displayed with logos for other virtual worlds or platforms, the inSL logo must be the same size and given equal prominence as the other logos.‘ I would assume bigger is ok too! ;)
I suggest you print out the guidelines and hang them on the toilet wall, to memorize them, as they are rather complicated:
I do not have ‘a Second Life‘ anymore, neither am I allowed to talk about ‘my Second Life‘. Then how do I do it? When I want to talk about ‘your Second Life®’ I say you have ‘a Second Life®’. Thank the Linden Gods I can still call you a ‘SL user‘ or ‘Second Life avatar‘ though. If I want to discuss this with you in-world, I need to throw you an SLurl®, not a slurl. And we now pay in Linden™ dollars. And how did you log on to the SL Grid™ today? Using the Windlight™ client? I see… .
What is very interesting though:
No Trademark or Business-Name Registration. Never register your full SL Associated Name, or any part of your SL Associated Name that includes “SL” or “inSL,” as a trademark, service mark, or business or organization name. For example:
This is OK to register: Architectural Design Services
This is NOT OK to register: SL Architectural Design Services (can’t include “SL”) Architectural Design Services inSL (can’t include “inSL”)
Imho this - once again - renders the SLart trademark claim void. Especially with this added: Your SL Associated Name must use “SL” or “inSL” (but not both) in combination with your own word mark (for example, Dell® or Toyota®, if you own those word marks), or in combination with a name that uses at least two generic nouns.
And as I’m not in the USA:
Linden Lab and Second Life and InSL and Linden and SLurl and SL are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. I hope I did not forget one.
Before anybody panics, they will probably not shoot you for just mentioning Second Life and not Second Life® in conversation. Probably the same with blogging about your Second Life in stead of your Second Life®. As long as you are not using any of the Linden Lab trademarks for business, selling, branding, advertising and dubious domain names, you should be ok.
42 Responses to “inSL™: Your World. Your Imagination. Our trademark.”
Oh, maybe one more nice to know alt + num…
ALT + 0169 makes ©
I always found 0149 and and 0164 to be fun too.
•¤• Don’t you think? •¤• ;)
hmm, maybe i have an other keyboard-layout.
0149 looks like ò and 164 like ñ.
So this looks for me a bit ø.
;)
okokok, i missed the 0 in front, my mistake. •¤
No problem. :Þ
I added the ‘0′ a bit later than the comment. Forgot to mention it myself.
I make mistakes too. We can all agree on that by now! Ó_Ò
Dubious domain names?
I’m fucked.
Next thing you know, the IRS will be after all our asses. gah!
I guess I’m gonna have to be known as SL®im Warrior then?
or maybe just SL™immie
Guidelines complicated? COMPLICATED? Vint, you should see some of the 5-7cm thick binders in my RL office, where companies which probably all of your readers know outline their logo and CI (corporate Identity) guidelines. I have one binder of ~3cm thickness from a well known IT manufacturer, which online contains the usage guidelines for the “… authorized partner” logo!
Compared to that, the guidelines for the inSL logo are a childrens rhyme.
Don’t quote me 100% on this but I believe trademark law is enforced with fellow nations.
Example: Buger King, fast food joint in the US, can enforce their trademark in any country that respects the US trademark. Australia, if I recall, has a different relationship, hence, Burger King is called Hungry Jacks.
I’m googling some more, but I *think* that’s the basics of it. Please correct me, anyone, if you have more accurate information.
So am I safe with my wordpress blog??? Sheesh
I wonder if all this is related someway with the SLart™ story…
Of course i understand Linden Lab®’s right to protect his trademarks, but i think the information is a bit confusing for the moment.
We should ask Torley to make a VideoTutorial about this.
Do I need a paper signed by the shrink to prove that I can haev second life which is developed by LL’s™ platform called Second Life™? Cause I am not going to put that ugly symbol of capitalist posession-obsession all over my writing.
Crap, change that to SL.isfullofcrap and you’re ok. Full and crap are two generic nouns? :d
Raul, I don’t think so. This is something they just felt they had to do (because they forgot to do it years ago. Just the ‘inSL’ part for residents is new.
And Miss Kimban, I think as long as we don’t have more readers/day than SL’s concurrency unit, we’re fine. And I’m far from there. ;)
What? That’s RIDICULOUS. Stupid LL™. However, we can use gestures in SL™ to replace “Second Life” with “Second Life™”. I do that with typos I do normally, like dushbags = douchebags. (No longer do that, but, still) But, Crap Mariner is in a bit of a bad situation as well… As saying something is bad about a product, when using a public way like advertising, domain names, site names, etc. can get the owner sued as people generally believe advertising. :-S
Wait… So does that mean if my SL Talk service was still open, i’d have to use SL™ Talk?? X.X Good thing DuoGrid can’t face any issues. It is about the SL grids, but Grid is a general word. :-P
Wait a sec… That means you can keep saying “My second life is awesome” instead of the new “My Second Life™ is awesome”, since you’re talking about your virtual life, that is your second one which HAPPENS TO BE in Second Life. Or you could just say “My 2nd life is awesome” to avoid any conflicts with LL™. :-P
Uh-oh! I see they don’t allow “2Life”, so I guess “2LifePeople” is going down… D-: Poor owner :-S
Smiley, SL Talk would not have been a good brand name. As you need two generic nouns with the SL, so that would have been ST Talk and Chatter or something…
They always did say that you can not use ’secondlife’ in an url (somewhere on their site), I remember I read that. But I still believe if you aren’t doing something to gain profit with it, etc. they won’t bother taking it away from you.
And no, 2nd life wasn’t allowed neither. :d As for 2LifePeople, they could claim they mean ‘to life’… get a life… ? ;)
Eric, I am going to quote: Don’t quote me 100% on this but I believe trademark law is enforced with fellow nations.
Hungry Jack’s? LMAO. Ah well, they said on their guideline, not in the USA, just leave the symbols for what they are and post that text. I’m just going to put it in my footer and then be done with it. As I said, I don’t expect them to come after an innocent blogger. They just want a stick to wave with, if it’s needed. (Obvious abuse of their ® or ™.) ;)
What I do remember is that I complained about secondlifevideotutorials.com being bogus (just after your money and that’s it) a year ago, and that it was fwd’d to their legal department. Today the domain is gone. So maybe they did do something after all? Or well, could be it just wasn’t worth the money.
The domain secondlifevideotutorials.com has expired. Please contact your domain name registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your service provider, visit http://domainhelp.tucows.com.
Imho, the new policy (or their policy finally made clear) is not to harass innocent people, but just to get asses like this ‘out of the air’.
I’m not totally getting if this can and/or has to be done for in-world brands aswell.
*cunfused*
Has to be done for in-world brands as well. Stipulated in their brand center text somewhere too. You have ninety days to get rid of the hand and put the ‘inSL’ logo on it.
Oh, I thought it was ONLY for in-world brands :-)
“they will probably not shoot you for just mentioning Second Life and not Second Life® in conversation…”
I do hope so, because: what with voice conversations??
how do you pronounce ®™© anyway??
[…] good you take a look at the blog post I mentioned above. More interesting thoughts about this in a post in Vint Falken’s blog and in this other in Looker Lumet’s […]
just use SecondLife in one word… didn’t see that mentioned anywhere in the tm/reg-tm guidelines/bla-bla
Dr Scofield, I quote from ‘Proper Reference to Linden Lab’s Brand Names in Text’:
This is NOT OK:
Second life
second life
sl
Second-Life
SecondLife
2nd Life
2Life
Second Lifers
Linden Labs
Lindex
slurl
Lindenism
ah, didn’t spot that. thx for pointing that out. wonder whether 2L is OK? ;-)
Hmmm, so we need a new name that explains two concepts of what we do this world…
The number two, and a sense of purpose…
Aha…
Deux Do!
hmmm… assorted thoughts….
It came to my mind too that it is, at least partly, provoked by SLart case. With that in respect, it makes sense. It is better to have LL’s paw on SL than some resident’s that thinks he has a great biz idea. But it is very bad to overexercise that.
I am keeping my right to speak and write about my second life, my friend’s and about second life (as in living) in general. When speaking about specific product of the company Linden Lab, namely platform Second Life, then I am cool with sticking those fetish letters. It’s their name, after all. But my life stays mine. I never counted their rating on my own blog, but I doubt that there is more positive than negative contexts when speaking about SL the product. *shrugs* It’s not my mistake, I just have a right to have an opinion on the product I use.
Disclaimer with all the required lawspeak will not go in the footer but on separate page. Footer is to expenive space to fill it with something that nobody reads.
Is SL bloggers logo now problematic? And the name of the group?
And what about comments. Should we now state that we’re not responsible for opinions of pepole who comment and if they forget to put TM after the SL?
I’m tempted to globally replace all references to S****d L**e with “Some 3d game thingy” & redirect all S**rls to Goatse. Feckers.
~wOOt~
One vote for the SLArtCritic
You are doing great work, I immediately thought of you when I posted: see: http://jeanricard.tumblr.com/post/29793464
Now lets see if LL (not a trademark yet, I don’t think) will take on SLART®®.
Can you have duel trademarks?
Just to be safe we should all add two symbols to SLART®®. Maybe add a reference with the disclaimer like:
SL, inSL, Linden Lab, Linden & Second Life are all trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. SLART is a trademark infringement of Linden Research, Inc’s trademark.
~wOOt~, Architecture + and JeanRicard Broek are not affiliated with or sponsored by Linden Research or whoever owns SLART.
~LMAO~
is SLT (Second Life Time) trademarked?
Just to let you know, Windows alt-codes don’t particularly work in the HTML environment. Many blogging platforms, however, have a way to click on the glyph you want, and the correct ISO code will be inserted.
Not that you have to worry overmuch about this. The one thing, after fuller examination, I may do is change the SL logo to the inSL logo on my own blog. Anything else, first they’ll have to serve me with a compliance letter; and I do doubt that they’re gonna hire a bunch of legal associates to go surfing through Technorati et al. to track down every single SLog and force compliance or cease-and-desist.
(Did you know you were a SLogger? Well, I guess it’s better than a slack– [WHACK!].)
Try ™ & ®.
™ = ™
® = ®
Simple. Assuming this blog translates HTML correctly…
Sciamachy, It does. ;)
And what about comments. Should we now state that we’re not responsible for opinions of pepole who comment and if they forget to put TM after the SL?
Dandellion, I don’t think that’s an excuse. We could fix our blogs that if they forget, the blog inserts it for them. Of course, then we should teach the blog when to insert it (My Second Life® vs. a Second Life avatar) and I’m not sure if my blog is _that_ smart. ;)
As for the SLBloggers logo:
Anyone remember the 2Live Crew?
Yikes. I knew the song though… ok, maybe this is the type of association they want to get rid off? :d
Hehe - me so laggy, me love you wrong time! ;-)
That insl logo is so ugly :(
The logo for “inSL” is ugly, but we’ll live with it. The problem is that we’re not going to be able to use “Bloggers-inSL.com” or something like that.
SLART might survive the war. They filed the trademark way before “SL” was filed by Linden Research, Inc. (check the USPTO). They even got the trademark granted to them before LL got a permission to use “SL”. And LL did not file an opposition to SLART. So they are, very likely, safe from lawsuits.
Of course, nothing prevents Linden Lab from banning any and all avatars that use “SLART” somewhere, either in SL, or on a blog, or on a piece of paper. They can ban anyone not in compliance with their ToS. If they ban everybody using “SLART”, the problem solves itself — without LL needing to go through a lawsuit. (The SLART people would have to fight back, suing LL in order to get their avatars back).
It’s against this possible “threat to ban” without going through a lawsuit that we’re mostly angry about. The ToS gives LL too much power. It effectively allows LL to curb freedom of expression if they dislike it, and do so without appeal nor recourse. They’re not required to give your avatar access to SL, even you’re a paying customer. Bragg, no matter how illegitimate his trick of hacking LL’s auctio system was, required to file a suit against LL to get his avatar, his money, and (part) of his land back. This took months. Most people won’t care — if they get banned, they won’t fight back in court.
LL knows that very well.
Also, how many people need to be banned? 10 thousand or 15 thousand? Well, that’s just one day of new registrations. LL can safely do that without affecting the continued growth of SL…
[…] lots to think about, and including, but definitely not limited, to the following articles: http://www.vintfalken.com/insl-your-world-your-imagination-our-trademark/ http://sl.governormarley.com/slpress/?p=27 […]
[…] screenshots of Linden in-world objects and Linden avatars, subject to these usage guidelines. - and took it away again (while in the mean time not caring much about our IP rights). I’m tempted to change […]
[…] interesting fact is that - according to Richard Minsky’s paperwork - LL asked - as we hoped would happen - Minsky to stop hassling other residents and abandon his trademark as it does not comply with […]
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