{"id":255,"date":"2006-05-25T23:56:06","date_gmt":"2006-05-25T22:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/?p=255"},"modified":"2006-05-26T23:58:24","modified_gmt":"2006-05-26T22:58:24","slug":"web-20-conference-whats-a-trade-mark-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/2006\/05\/25\/web-20-conference-whats-a-trade-mark-worth\/","title":{"rendered":"Web 2.0 Conference- What’s A Trade Mark Worth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As some people may be aware, Tom Raftery<\/a> (a good sort, from my small dealings with him) is part of a not-for-profit group called IT@Cork. <\/p>\n

They’ve been arranging an “it@cork Web 2.0 half-day conference<\/a>“. Like Ronseal, this is planned to do exactly what it says on the tin. Yesterday they received a fax<\/a> from Sandra L. Grayson, whose headed paper describes her as Senior Vice President General Counsel CMP United Business Media. <\/p>\n

She must love it when people at parties ask what she does. <\/p>\n

Anyway, the content of the letter may be boiled down to two relevant sections.<\/p>\n

CMP has a pending application for registration of Web 2.0 <\/em>as a service mark for arranging and conducting live events, namely trade shows, expositions, business conferences and educational conferences in various fields of computers and information technology. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and <\/p>\n

\nCMP hereby demands that you immediatly cease and desist from utilizing Web 2.0 as the title of your event and from making any further use of your mark or any mark that is confusingly similar to it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Were I in Tom’s shoes and I received this letter I would carry on with my plans as previously laid out, after responding with a polite letter asking <\/p>\n

“What service mark, in what jurisdiction?”<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Tom has now received a second letter from Ms. Grayson<\/a>. Enclosed with this, though not published by Tom so curious uninvolved onlookers can’t peer at them in detail, according to the letter comes evidence of a “pending trademark application” in the European Union “for Web 2.0 for arranging and conducting live events, namely trade shows, expositions, business conferences and educational conferences in various fields of computers and information technology.”<\/p>\n

Without seeing the papers enclosed with that, it would be impossible to make even an idle assessment of them. Still, in general terms I’d point out that an application for a trade mark<\/a>, like an application for anything else, is not proof that you’ve been granted such protection.<\/p>\n

Also, to be successful in any such application, you’d have to show that you are attempting to protect a use which is not common in the jurisdiction. <\/p>\n

If memory serves, the state-backed Enterprise Ireland<\/a> ran a Web 2.0 conference recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As some people may be aware, Tom Raftery (a good sort, from my small dealings with him) is part of a not-for-profit group called IT@Cork. They’ve been arranging an “it@cork Web 2.0 half-day conference“. Like Ronseal, this is planned to do exactly what it says on the tin. Yesterday they received a fax from Sandra L. Grayson, whose headed paper describes her as Senior Vice President General Counsel CMP United Business Media. She must love it when people at parties ask what she does. Anyway, the content of the letter may be boiled down to two relevant sections. CMP has a pending application for registration of Web 2.0 as a service mark for arranging and conducting live events, namely trade shows, expositions, business conferences and educational conferences in various fields of computers and information technology. and CMP hereby demands that you immediatly cease and desist from utilizing Web 2.0 as the title of your event and from making any further use of your mark or any mark that is confusingly similar to it. Were I in Tom’s shoes and I received this letter I would carry on with my plans as previously laid out, after responding with a polite letter asking “What service mark, in what jurisdiction?” UPDATE: Tom has now received a second letter from Ms. Grayson. Enclosed with this, though not published by Tom so curious uninvolved onlookers can’t peer at them in detail, according to the letter comes evidence of a “pending trademark application” in the European Union “for Web 2.0 for arranging and conducting live events, namely trade shows, expositions, business conferences and educational conferences in various fields of computers and information technology.” Without seeing the papers enclosed with that, it would be impossible to make even an idle assessment of them. Still, in general terms I’d point out that an application for a trade mark, like an application for anything else, is not proof that you’ve been granted such protection. Also, to be successful in any such application, you’d have to show that you are attempting to protect a use which is not common in the jurisdiction. If memory serves, the state-backed Enterprise Ireland ran a Web 2.0 conference recently.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[662],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}