News from the amazon.com case
08/04/2005 16:04 | Categories: LifeType | 0 Comments
Some more news about this issue...
I spoke yesterday to Jeff Barr from Amazon.com and clearly the issue is that Amazon wants the "plog" name back. Their trademark was registered in Jan 2003, about half a year earlier than we started the pLog project in sf.net.
He said that amazon.com wants to deal with this in a nice and easy way. He said amazon.com will cover any expenses that this will/could generate (getting new domains, transferring the current ones, etc), and will even help promoting the project. I am still waiting for their proposal but there'll be a "transition period" of like 6 months so that users have enough time to get used to this. Not to mention that we could also use this as free publicity.
However, I just sent an email to the EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation) because I'd like to know the legal background on this. I am an EU citizen and I am not sure if US trademarks can affect me (us?) and if Amazon has any legal grounds to do what they're doing. It's been a lot of hard work to become recognized by the word "plog" and throwing everything down the drain... doesn't sound too good.
If interested, this is the email I sent to the EFF. Let's see if they get back to us:
Hello,
my name is Oscar Renalias and I am the leader and founder of the pLog [1] project, a GPLed open-source blogging platform for user communities. PLog stands for "PHP blog".
If this not the right mailbox for this kind of inquiries, please let me know the right one.
I am writing to you because we were recently contacted by Jeff Barr from Amazon.com regarding the name "plog". Amazon has a trademark in the USPTO about it [2] since January 2003, covering something that they call "personal logs" [3] and they would like us to stop using their trademark.
Our project was registered in sourceforget.net in June 2003 [4], but our popularity has grown quite much recently after releasing our latest major release so that probably got Amazon's attention.
I had a phone conversion with Jeff yesterday and he made it clear that Amazon wants to handle this in a nice and easy way and that they will help us in anything they can, even with money if needed (domain transfer, etc) as long as we agree to change our project name. However, it's taken us almost 2 years of very hard to become recognized by this name and letting it go know doesn't sound like a very good idea. I have a couple of questions about this, so we were wondering if you could help us:
- Do US trademarks apply everywhere in the world? I am a Spanish citizen and most of the members of the team are either EU citizens (Germany, Spain, etc), Chinese or Taiwanese. We do have some active American members, though.
- Have you had any case like this before?
I am still waiting for Amazon's proposal but in the meantime I would like to hear your advice. As I said, it all looked like Amazon wants to be helpful but we would still like to know where we legally stand in this case.
We would be glad to provide more background information if needed.
Best regards, Oscar Renalias
[1]: http://www.plogworld.net
[2]: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=6pi97.2.1
[3]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/13023961/102-2039459-6744906
[4]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/plog
I'll post more here as events unfold.