Linden Lab clarifies trademarks policy
by Tateru Nino 
Apr 2nd 2008 at 1:00AM
Filed under: Culture, MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Legal, Virtual worlds
This-evening, Linden Lab issued a policy clarification to the recent changes to allowed trademark use as a part of the Second Life Brand Center announcement. It doesn't actually directly address any of the questions that we put to Linden Lab, so we are resubmitting those, and it raises a couple of extra ones which we will add to the pile.
The new policy appears to seek to clarify nominative fair use as being acceptable -- after all, you can't effectively talk about Second Life or Linden Lab without using those terms (well, you could say Linden Research Inc's unnameable virtual world, if you were desperate).
The examples given all append unusual nouns on the end of the trademark terms, though. Unusual as in either redundant or not-commonly-used. If those are required then it merely hearkens back to what is already in the Brand Center policies, and this policy clarification does not make that clear.
The remaining clarifications/answers only reiterate what the Brand Center already spells out, so aren't in and of themselves genuinely useful information.
All in all, while today's clarification gives the initial, surface appearance of being lighter or gentler than the Brand Center policies, if taken literally (and we don't see how else it should actually be intended to be taken) it is neither of these things -- nor, apparently, does it actually clarify anything in the end.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
millenomi said on 7:05AM 4-02-2008
I don't understand what all this fuss is about. Trademark law is notoriously hairy and requires a high degree of micromanagement -- and trademark licenses similar to SL's are commonplace (for example, Apple's "Mac/Universal" logo agreement is basically the same; not to speak of the whole Firefox/Iceweasel debacle).
In what way does it restrict anyone? Things that were fair use are still allowed and there are a number of things you can do that under trademark law you couldn't before.
OK, LL's law/rules enforcement is a little shaky at times (see casinos/stock exchanges etc), but I fail to see why they are wrong in this case.
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