Monday, April 9, 2007

A Name Change

Steorn was busy in the forums today. I'll get to the interesting posts later tonight, but first I wanted to address Sean's comment:

Hi SteornTracker - its good to be back ... there will be an update on the Jury process on Friday and I will never comment on speculation on who is in or out of the Jury. The SPDC concept has been in our plans since early last year.

And I must also apologize in advance for the nasty letter that you are going to get from our lawyers in the next few days.
He followed up the "apology" with this:
Well any URL with Steorn or Orbo in it is getting a letter, we need to enforce our trademarks, it has nothing to do with the content.
After doing some digging, I found that I'm somewhere between fair use and trademark infringement. I see no reason going down the legal path when all I have to do is make a quick change to the website. So everyone, welcome to the Free Energy Tracker blog.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, thank goodness for URL forwarding.

Hope we'll enjoy many more posts from you.

Anonymous said...

I see no issue with your previous name. Look at sites like xboxforums.net and well gheez 1,000's of sites using product names. Are news outlets also going to be forbidden to say the names? This is counterproductive and suspicious..

Anonymous said...

You MAY use someone else’s trademark in your domain name or blog’s URL if it is relevant to the subject of your discussion and does not mislead people into thinking the trademark holder endorses your content. No one can block non-commercial uses of their trademarks (including critical commentary about the brand or parodies).
Courts have found that non-misleading use of trademarks in URLs and domain names is fair in several cases (e.g. Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp - for “ballysucks”. v. Faber and Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer ).
Also, you MAY use someone’s trademark in your URL as long as you’re not making commercial use in the same category of goods or services that their trademark covers. Only “famous” marks like VICTORIA’S SECRET can block the use of their mark by others in ALL goods and services if the use actually dilutes the value of their famous brand. Thus, anyone can sell diesel fuel even though one company has trademarked DIESEL for jeans. Brazil is one of the ccTLDs that even uses a blacklist of famous marks and will not anyone register a URL without permission of the trademark owner.

Tundrabog said...

Sean's comment about lawyer's letters is puzzling (nothing new about that).

There are a number of potential reasons.

1. Perhaps he wants to create interest, drama or is simply pissed that this site talks about real information instead of the pre-digested pablum Steorn doles out in their forums. Hobbit hats anyone?

2. He's trying to prevent search engines looking for 'Steorn' coming across sites that present real information not in line with the Steorn myth. A Wikipedia link would soon scupper that idea.

3. He's bullshitting again.

Regardless, you did the right thing by changing the name.

Anonymous said...

It looks like the walls may be closing in on Sean. He is becoming paranoid. Removing those who are making an effort to expose the fraud. These are the actions of a desparate huckster not those of a CEO who is confidentthat he has a world changing technology. If Steorn has what is says, why ban anyone? The only reason to ban anyone is fear of being exposed. Seans getting cornered and he will be lashing out more and more.

Anonymous said...

Pretty much any company with IP will protect their brand in a similar way, and buy up all and any domains they can with their name in. Its standard practice.

As for Steorntracker's response - well done to him! An intelligent person at last. Even if Steorn didn't have the real right to request the name be changed, what would be the point in following it up? Hours of legal exchanges, worsening of relationships....

8ilbo