Wednesday 13th August from 6pm
Hi Guys,
Who actually owns this site?
http://londonseo.orgI am forced by law to defend our trademark on PubCon and have contacted the attorneys. Trying to figure out where to send the papers.
Thanks,
Brett
What a guy!!
Just before the mail arrived, BoboTheCat (E-mail: niceseo@yahoo.com | IP: 67.79.0.250) left a comment.
‘forced by law’ - what, at gunpoint or summat?
Even if it is in the domain name, that’s not always enough to be an issue. I’m pretty sure that you need to not only register the domain, but also use it in a way likely to ‘take precedence’ away from the original. This is clearly not happening.
And WTF does “I am forced by law to defend our trademark” mean? Which law?
Seems a little heavy-handed to me.
I received the email from Tabke as well. It came from the same IP that BoboTheCat posted his commments from:
Received: from USA (rrcs-67-79-0-250.sw.biz.rr.com [67.79.0.250])
by webmasterworld.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 91966320944;
Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:22:25 -0600 (CST)
So it is official. He has lost his fucking mind. We’ve all seen it coming. The thread deletions, the robots.txt fiasco, the threadwatch.net bullshit, and a host of other little things that indicate an impending implosion. There were folks in the halls at SES NY laughing about “Chairman Tabke” so I think the message has gotten out to the general pop that all is not well in Tabke’s magic kingdom. Shit, we’ll be getting an email from George Mitchell now. Oh well, fuck it.
I wonder if he’ll ask us to take down our site or just remove the reference to PubCon. If I say it 3 time in a mirror will Tabke magically show up and bore me to death? PubCon, PubCon, PubCon…….nope.
So is Bobo a snitch or is it Brett in disguise? Either way I hope he take’s Mike up on his invitation. We can play ’skin the cat”.
Brett, I have some suggestions on where you can put those papers.
Cheers,
Str0ud
I don’t think the objection is the ‘SEO’, it’s the ‘pubcon’. And if he’s got the trademark on it, then the idea is that you have to prevent unauthorized use or risk losing the trademark. Unfortunately it’s a term that seems to be being used genereically, like ‘kleenex’ or ‘aspirin’. Nevertheless, it’s a conference at a pub for SEO’ers being called pubcon - and that’s exactly what his pubcon is.
I agree he’s being a heavy handed jackass. I’ve had this very same issue before and I did not lead with ‘I’m going to rip you a new asshole’. I led with ‘hey folks, that’s a trademark, I have to protect it or lose it, you’re competing with me, can you please change it’. THAT”S the way to do with without making enemies in such a small community. If they don’t comply, THEN you open the can of whoopass.
Despite the arrogance though, he’s still in the right if he has the trademark.
I’d suggest the best way to smooth this over is to ask for permission to use the term on the site. It’s a small event of friends, completely non-commercial with no intentions of competing with his event. Perhaps he’ll bend a bit and let you use it with ‘pubcon is a registered trademark of wmwm and is used with permission’. That seems like a reasonable agreement, he’s not losing anything commercially or monetarily and he still gets the (R) agreement.
Interesting.
Does someone want to contact me for a chat ? Brett, that includes you mate
I thought RC Jordan, Mike Mackin, and NFFC were the first to coin the phrases PubCon and PubConference. This may get interesting.
Check out:
http://pubconference.com/
Look at it this way….FREE PR for a non commercial event!
Wrote some notes here - http://www.threadwatch.org/node/5914#comment-35690
In my experience (INAL) if Brett only has a US trademark document it’s not that useful in UK jurisdiction. If he has an international one then he will have a claim.
Anyway - like Adam says, good PR for the conference. Whatever you call it now you’re going to have 20x the numbers at the next one!