SLart me up!
January 23, 2008 2:08 am
For those who did not follow the updates on the ‘SLasshole trademarks SLart’ topic, what I deemed impossible, is a - far from virtual - reality after all: Richard Minsky owns - at least some kind - of trademark over the SLars: slart, Slart and SLart are all his. Apparently, according to USA law, putting a TM means just a trademark, the R with a circle around it, is a registered one. It’s still not 100% clear to me which if SLart is now a registered trademark: this document would say it’s registered, but Richard Minsky still just shows the ‘TM’ on the SLartmagazine’s website. Either way, this leaves us with only SL art, Second Life Art and SL-art to use…
… and me with a lot of e-mails, IM conversations and blogposts to read and ponder over. This all started with Loki Popinjay’s blogpost, which was quickly followed by mine. Also Daman Tenk expressed his views on this and so did Sofian, in English as well as French. Tateru wrote a more nuanced piece for Massively and Cyanide Seelowe rethought changing the SLartwiki’s name. The discussing goes on on Flickr and on the ‘virtualartpedia’ - former known as the SLart wiki - someone says there is a bit of a controversy going on about the term ‘SLart’. Before yet another person asks, I did not edit that wike. Ever. One has always be taught that one needs to be more or less neutral to change informational wiki data. ;)
Also:
- Dandellion Kimban - How To Kill A Businessman
- Osprey - SLart Warfare
- New!! Virtually Blind - SLart trademark
I contacted Mr. Minsky on this through IM, shortly after my first blogpost - hoping for more clarity on which use of SLart he considers fair use and which one he would send cease and desist letter out for. He never replied to me, so we did not have the chance to have this conversation.
I am still convinced that I although I believe there is no clarity on if Rezzable would be allowed to use the ‘SLart’ word as ‘fair use’, he had no right, no reason and not a single feeling of ‘ethics’ when he bothered Ganymedes on removing the SLart word used for describing - guess what, Second Life Art - from his profile. Neither does ‘protecting your trademark’ asks from you that you force a wiki that has no aim in making money to change it’s name.
In the bunch of e-mails, the IM conversations and etcetera, some ‘Plans of Actions’ were suggested to me and discussed. I’ll run them here, with a statement as to why or why I’m not considering them. Please bear with me, and feel free to correct me when you think I’m wrong.
The choice of what to do, and how to react to possible cease and desist notifications when you use ‘SLart’ is something we need to decide on for ourselves. Yet, personally, I don’t believe in the ‘let them walk over you, a broken back is something to enjoy’ theory. ;)
An eye trademark for an eye trademark
A very popular suggestion was: ‘trademark something that he thinks is important, and then switch/force him in letting you use SLart in exchange for his use of your trademark‘.
I can not find any good reason to this, as it would take a lot of effort, some money, I would need to come up with something that actually makes sense trademarking it - unlike SLart - and I would feel mean. Next one.
Legal assistance: why we feel we may use SLart
A costly plan of action, that would mean we should get organised and seek professional legal advice. That professional legal advice could get the asserted group a general draft document on ‘why we do not think your cease and desist letters make any sense and we should not obey’ for general use.
As we are in different situations here - SLart at the Cannery, use in profiles, a public wiki, blogpost, … I feel this would get very complicated, and doubt if there would be one document that could serve all. Yet I am not completely ruling this one out, and neither am I dismissing the following option completely.
Legal assistence: cancellation of the SLart trademark
(If existent.) An even more costly endeavour, but the one that feels most ‘just’ to do. Yet, a lot of avatars & their respective are needed to work on and pay for this, which would be a waste, as I don’t feel the trademark was justified in the first place. Of course, if it does exist etcetera, this is the only way to prove it shouldn’t have existed in the first place?
I should thank both Mr. Duransky as Mr. Legal Writer for explenation of terminology, pointing out some interesting links to me and advice on the legal options.
Cease and Desist
Not an option. Over my dead body!*
*On a no-damage-enabled sim, that is. ;)
Screw you! I have to right to say ‘SLart’
As for this moment, I’m going with this one as it comes to vintfalken.com, my flickr account and in-world pressence. Rezzable’s SLart at the Cannery’s future, is not a thing I can decide upon solely, I can just give my opinion and advise.
As far as my vintfalken.com is concerned, I fall under Belgian & EU trademark law. I find my use of SLart as a descriptive terminolgy for the Second Life arts & artwork to be justified, and shall not end this. The same goes for my presence on Flickr. In-world use of it might be a bit more tricky, as LL is rumoured to actually comply to trademark violations reports - opposed to copyright violation that is. ;) Yet, if I may write I drink Redbull in my profile, why would I not be allowed to say I consume SLart on an almost daily basis? Or put a profile pick on the places I love to go for my dose of SLart?
And you? Do you still dare to say ‘SLart’, or do you stutter ‘S… SL… a.. aarrr….’ and then fall into silence?
Disclaimer: This post is written as an in between follow up, and is in no way a definite statement of mine as it comes to my position on the use of the - assumed - trademarked letter-thingie ‘SLart’. Especially as discussion is still going on, I’m learning new things everyday and someone promised me another dose of information on the subject.
25 Responses to “SLart me up!”
I can say SLart.
I am not a lawyer, but it sounds to me like “SLart” is a generic term. Like “Coke” and “Spam”. I can refer to my off-brand cola-flavored soda as a “Coke” as much as I want. I can refer to my greasy, canned ham(?) product as “Spam” because it is a generic term. If someone produces some Second Life based art, it is “SLart” simply by it’s previous and continuing use. The same goes for “Blog”, which could probably be trademarked under the same line of thought, but isnt.
Personally, if someone wanted to charge me a license fee every time I said “SLart”, I would be sure to let them know that they are total idiots. I would also let their customers (do they have any?) know the violent, rabid, and downright anti-social attitude their company of choice has toward the rest of the SLart Community.
Oh, god, directly after this item in my feed reader was a post about T-Mobil having trademarked the color magenta >_
whoops. http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/11/04/beware-t-mobile-owns-the-color-magenta/
This is going nice… next thing I trademark is a word ‘trademark’ and then a word ‘word’.
The first is 1000$ per use, the later one is 1L$ per use.
I didn’t follow the whole conversation, but isn’t SL in itself a registered trademark, owned by Linden Labs? Can’t Linden Labs sue Mr. Minsky on account of that (because his trademark makes only sense because of the SL part in it, etc.)? Might be worth asking one of the Lindens.
Day, this is indeed shocking. I love the raster with all the registered trademark symbols on the magenta parts illustration though. From the lava website, this is spot on:
“Elk bedrijf moet zich kunnen beschermen tegen concurrentievervalsing. Ook T-Mobile. Maar elke juridische bescherming die verder zou gaan dan dat, creeert juist concurrentievervalsing. Het lijkt me eerlijk gezegd onmogelijk dat T-Mobile universeel alleenrecht op Magenta heeft verkregen.”
Every company should have the right to protect itself against dishonest competition. Also T-Mobile. But any legal protection that goes further than this, creates dishonest competition. …
[…] January 23, 2008 by London Spengler Nuzz said. […]
Argh! The SLart trademark will never apply on me, since I live in Israel, and no one wants to get even near to going into legal discussions to make it trademarked here as well, and therefore, I have every right to use it in my sites. (Including DuoGrid, and so, this page’s title shall not be changed! :-P)
And Milena and Soraya, you’re 100% right. Linden can sue him for not abiding their copyright usage laws, by trademarking a name including “SL” referencing to Second Life, and it’s a publicly-used word, although Wikimedia don’t believe me without proof ( :-P ), and so, just like if we use, for example, “Smiley’s PLAYSTATION3 Controller” (PLAYSTATION3 is the official trademark for PS3, it’s supposed to be capitalized for some reason :-S), I won’t get sued for using the PLAYSTATION3 name in it if I state it’s not official. Like other accessories for it.
Though one interesting thing is if we use the Hebr-ish translation of Second Life (Hebrish is words spelled in Hebrew which sound exactly like in English, like foreign names originally in Hebrew, that were changed to English, like Shmoolik?) we won’t get sued :-D. I can even trademark it for all I care! Wait, that’s IT! Let’s trademark SL and say it means Subsidised Lands, then we could start sending Cease-and-Desist letters to Richard Minsky to take the SL out of SLart, and if he says it means otherwise, then we have a reason to use SLart ourselves. We’ll say, we mean virtual art in Second Life (Oh, and by the way, the Urban Dictionary term in the previous post was sent by me. You’re welcome! :-P) and we don’t mean the SLart magazine.
P.S.: If you can read Hebrew on your machine (use UTF-8 Encoding) here’s the Hebrish translation for Second Life: Second Life = סקנד לייף.
Wow, this comment is LOOOOOOONG!
I’m sorry, Smiley, but I don’t like the Hebrew solution all that much. I can read it, but have a hard time pronouncing it. ;)
As for Linden suing his (SL)ass off, I don’t see that happening. Honestly, I think they could not care less. :(
This Mr Minski is a living trademark infringment as he uses the name of a major caracter out of a novel by the marquis de Sade ( the ogre Minski in the history of Juliette). As such he should change his name, maybe into Slinsky. ;-))
From what I can gather from the documentation that you’ve posted from the registration.. his trademark is all capitals, and refers to the name of a magazine. Every picture he supplied was that way, capitals and on some sort of magazine in world. I think, as long as you spell it as you have (SLart) and not try to make a magazine out of it, I don’t think he has any grounds to keep you from using it. Not that I think he should be allowed to register it in the first place, but.. meh. I believe he registered it so other people could not make money off of ‘his’ name.. which he assumes he was the first person to use the phrase.
I think what matters is not what contries law YOU fall under, but the companies who provide your services. I.E. Flickr is a US based company, so they, I think, would could be pressed to honor his copyright. I would imagine would be the same if your webhost is on us soil. shrugs. think its tragic though that one person can molopolize the term.
Mr. Something, how am I going to explain this to you in a simple way… ah.. well… tagging your photograph ‘with SLart’ is not a trademark infringement.
Coca Cola
Windows
Apple
Absolute
Besides, the hosting is Euro and Richard Minsky does not have copyright, only maybe some trademark. ;)
I think, as long as you spell it as you have (SLart) and not try to make a magazine out of it, I don’t think he has any grounds to keep you from using it. He claims he can.
I borrowed the Australian Legal Dictionary at work and under “trademark” it says:
“A sign used, or intended to be used, to distinguish ggods or services dealt with or provided in the course or trade by a person from goods or services so dealt with by any other person”.
The legal boys also pointed out that a trademark is a sign or a symbol, not a word. It’s a visual thing.
So Coca-Cola (in this typeface) is not a trademark. The Coca-Cola trademark is the red swirly writing they use. Or in other words - you cannot say a trademark out loud. That’s what copyright is for. Has he copyrighted the term as well? I don’t think you can copyright something that is in general usage.
So if you are not using the form of “SLart” that he has trademarked then what is the problem?
Coca-Cola and Pepsi don’t care if you say “I drink Coke and Pepsi” because it’s not their trademark and you aren’t trying to confuse something you sell with something they sell.
phonetically all we read is [sla:rt] so just a stupid word not meaning secondlife nor art . It doesn’t say “secondlife art” , it only suggests in a quite mediocre and very unoriginal way something. Boy i am happy nobody has trademarked my secondlife art word yet ” SecondliFART”
i better not do it CAUSE I SEW YOUR A** OFF .
“and better not do it” i meant sorry fot that (not for the A and the two *)
OMG my english is getting worse . I SU your A** off.
Now everybody sees that words can have different meanings just like “slart” hihi }8-)=
Now that I think of it.. Faerie is very correct.. The trademark is the visual of that. Copyright is where he would have to go, for any legality. Trademark would be the visual logo that he uses, identifying his brand or product.. and he never is consistant of it’s color.
And I’m pretty sure Maxx Something is correct as well.. It doesn’t matter where the offender is based. It matters what country the material is placed on. That might be all wet, as I’m not really all that deep into the legal portions of this stuff..
Faerie, Katrina, wrong.
He registered it as a standard character trademark, not a design trademark.
The standard character format should be used to register word(s), letter(s), number(s) or any combination thereof, without claim to any particular font style, size, or color, and absent any design element. Registration of a mark in the standard character format will provide broad rights, namely use in any manner of presentation. The stylized or design format, on the other hand, is appropriate if you wish to register a mark with a design element or word(s) or letter(s) having a particular stylized appearance that you wish to protect.
… and it doesn’t matter if you write that word as SLart, slart, slART or whatever variety in capitalisation you can think of.
hon, please… kimbaN… thanks… *kisses*
They should abolish such standard character trademarks. Really, just pick a clear design and colour combination for ‘SLart’ and he should not worry about people by accident mistaking our stuff for his, as it would be styled totally different. It would have been less ass-style that way too.
And I’ve corrected the Kimban. I’m sorry, hon. ;)
Also, a more in-depth post on the SLart trademark on Virtually Blind.
Thanks dear.
If he picked design he would not be in situation to chase people about what they have in their profiles. Pardon, he whould not be in situation to THINK he can do that.
[…] the last few days I’ve taken the time to go visit them. It’s been a delight – the SLart scene is even bigger than I first thought. One gallery was a bit special, though, and that was the […]
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