That’s real bad of Digg, very shameful, really, I\’m afraid to say. Watch out Marshall, maybe you might be next for using the logo without the (TM) / (R) symbol! Well, probably not - still not kool of them….

What if he trademarked Digggames or Digggames.com?

In any event, what service is “identical or confusingly similar” to Diggs? Why would they deliberetly go out of they way in an attempt to hurt someone who has some really great games?

The reality is that Digg benefits the most from sites like these… The reason they exists.

More damn lawyers trying to scare everyone they can with outrageous claims and demands. I hope everyone digg’s this article.

A Web 2.0 company acting like a Web 1.0 one….theres a surprise (not).

I agree 100% with Duncan.

Pathetic. Now I have another reason to not like digg.

US Trademark law demands you aggressively defend your trademark if you want to keep it, they are just trying to keep the rights to use the name Digg.

It’s irresponsible not to mention this, Techcrunch for example could lose rights to exclusive use of their name if I made domains like ‘TechCrunchGames’ and it wasn’t challenged.

Here you go : http://digg.com/tech_news/Digg.....iggGames_2

Let’s digg it guy’s and see if they remove it , this is good test for their credibility.

Alex you are absolutely correct. Digg’s trademark is a valuable asset to the company. In fact, because everybody knows the company is worth at least $200 million, unnamed insiders at the USPTO value the trademark at $60 million. The latest cover of TrademarkWeek magazine was “How this trademark went from $0 to $60 million in 8 months.”

Very nicely put, Alex.
Guys - Digg isn’t out to get anybody or destroy their websites and ideas. But, put it this way - If Digg allowed him to keep his harmless DiggGames.com website, then whose to say that ANOTHER person won’t come along and seriously try to make a profit off of the Digg name. You can’t say YES to some and NO to others - There has to be a VERY fine line with things like this. Come to think of it - There actually was another website that had to remove some of their content because they were trying to sell Digg Buttons to wear or put on backpacks and bags. I think I even remember Jay Adelson making a comment about it when it was on Digg - He liked the idea of the buttons because of the creativity and of course for the fan support - but he had to have them removed because it was a violation of the Digg trademark.

Faisal,

It is a good story to Digg but you linked to the wrong link.

This is the right one:
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/D....._DiggGames

Guy’s this is just an individual who though he was helping Digg by promoting its stories , he is one of the individuals who made Digg worth 60 millions (if that valuation is accurate).

i understand they want to protect their intellectual properties , that’s fine , but what i don’t understand is the language they used in the letter and the 100,000 they are threaten to make him pay.

Isn’t that evil?

Orli i submitted it and thought Digg will reject it if some body else have submitted it but it was accepted and went live.

Strange , it looks as a bug in Digg system.

Faisal, it’s not a bug. You linked to a different link from TechCrunch (the one with the comments) so Digg accepted your link.

Next time just run a search on digg for the name techcrunch before you submit a story. Most of the time, some one will be there faster

Ok:)

“US Trademark law demands you aggressively defend your trademark if you want to keep it, they are just trying to keep the rights to use the name Digg.”

Correct to some degree Alex. Trademarking law actually does not allow a entity to “pass off” another trademark that has been registered. The use of the name “diggGames” is a clear violation of trade marking law solely because they are monetizing someone else’s brand name and this is undoubtedly considered “passing off”.

It’s therefore entirely illegal to use a Registered Trademark in the following 3 respects:

1. Using a substantially identical or deceptively similar mark on goods or services for which the mark is registered.

2. Using a substantially identical or deceptively similar mark on goods or services ‘of the same description’ as, or ‘closely related to’, the goods or services for which the mark is registered, unless it can be established by the defendant that such use is not likely to deceive or cause confusion.

3. Using a substantially identical or deceptively similar mark to a ‘well-known’ trade mark on unrelated goods or services, subject to the use being likely to suggest a trade connection between those goods or services and the registered owner of the well-known mark.

Think about it - if you produced a product and made millions and you have a credible brand - would you want someone selling that brand, without your permission and risk the chance of them destroying your good name? Definately not.

I’m all for DiggGames.com - but they should have sought permission first and before trying to use Kevin’s hardwork.

Good discussion here. I don’t know for sure what I think of the situation. It’s complicated. I know I hate it when sploggers scrape the content here, but that’s not what’s at issue. It’s an interesting situation at the very least.

This is just a trademark issue, and Digg is forced to send these letters or risk losing the rights to their own name. I spoke to Kevin Rose about this tonight at Foo Camp, and he doesn’t want to do this, he has to do it.

Well, now that we can find the word “Google” in the Oxford English dictionary, that makes it an English word, does it not?

Mark A. Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, says, “Trademark law doesn’t give you exclusive rights in words, only the right to prevent consumer confusion.”

So now I am going to create a GoogleGames trademark and get Mr. Lemley to defend me in court when the JDs and PhDs come a-knockin’

curious if they will sue http://www.diggview.com next

The only thing Digg did wrong, perhaps, was to sic the lawyers on them instead of first making a polite request.

However, as the owner of a heavily pirated and splogged site, I think I can sympathize with Digg. When you have to deal with a large number of these cases every week, you end up getting kind of hard-nosed about it. I wish I could afford to delegate it to lawyers.

At first I would make polite e-mail requests if the infringers could be contacted, but now I’m more inclined to just file a DMCA notification with their ISP and be done with it. When you make a direct request, you often end up in an extended e-mail conversation with someone who has nothing better to do than to exchange e-mail with you. I don’t have the time to deal with every case in such a leisurely manner.

A competitor with whom I’m friendly does not defend his IP rights. I’d like to acquire his site, and I’m sure there are others who would also, since there is M&A activity in our niche now. But his treatment of his IP diminishes the value of his site. The .net and .org versions of his domain are taken by others, and the hyphenated versions are also all taken. Since his domain is made up of common words, it would be really difficult to untangle at this point and claim a trademark. So the worth of his site comes down to the traffic, if it can be redirected to another domain and retain its #1 Google rankings.

Jessep: Trademark protection can indeed give you exclusive right to a common word, even if it’s in the dictionary, but the scope of that monopoly is limited to identifying yourself in a specific business domain or domains, and in some cases a specific geographical area. Why don’t you run your specific GoogleGames example by Professor Lemley and see what he says? The limited domain and region concept is what he is getting at when he says “consumer confusion.”

This is really ridiculous of digg.com. How does one expect to build social communities through actions like these. What digg.com should have done is that asked diggames.com to either someway contribute to digg.com in a more direct way or maybe agree to some revenue sharing. Comeon, digg.com should help others achieve success the way it did.

If they’re going after folks, how about DuggMirror? On one hand I appreciate that they cache web pages in the case a site goes down. On the other, they butcher my pages and ultimately end up with my traffic when my site is back up while people continue to use the mirror. I would think Digg would take offense to them also duplicating their live front page.

Defend their trademark? Come on. If I own a well digging company and use the domain welldigger.com for instance, then it’s cool for digg to sue me or send a c&d? This is a bully move by Digg. Its not as if Digg didnt get some “inspiration” for their site from other sites and ideas… e.g. Slashdot and even more so the Scoop system, which beat them to the punch years ago.

Scoop/Digg, gee I wonder where they got the idea from.

“I spoke to Kevin Rose about this tonight at Foo Camp, and he doesn’t want to do this, he has to do it.”

What a complete load.. If he is doing then he wants to do it.
He is only saying that so he doesn’t look like a bully, It’s wasted on me though, From this he has shown exactly what dirrection he is taking digg and the digg ethics in.

This explains why DiggPuzzles.com put up a note a few days ago saying they wanted to sell the domain. I wondered what that was about I only go there to play that Dice Wars game.

I agree that they have the right to portect themselves but sending a laywer to do the job is
1) a waste of money. ( oh, they just got funding .. so they got plenty of $$$ .. )
2) an official letter from Kevin with Digg letterhead “POLITELY” stating his standpoint would have did it and if not.. then bring in the laywer. Given 50% of the sites complies with the letter ( and they likely would - since they are fans of Digg), DIgg would have save some money rather then feed the “sharks”.

Protecting your trademark is important, but if you thinked about it, if you need to protect your trademark, it proves you have a name, and these sites are pure Digg evangelists (free advertising). They could have capitalize on these sites by making them show a disclaimer and linked it back to Digg.

Last but not least, assuming that by doing these, they will nvr ever release any APIs for Digg or have to possibly kill their current DIgg script because tons of sites out there are violating their TM by having the DIgg it! button. Does this make sense? Doesn’t that contradicts? I would love some feedback on this.

Great Discussion.

The lawyers are sicked on Digggames.com because they are best to draft an official C&D letter and properly document the C&D demand. Often small tech companies fail to properly keep track of the documentation that a court action demands.

While I agree that this helps promote the Digg brand, it is very likely that Digg wants to use DiggGames strategy to generate more revenue.

If James feels the DiggGames name is very important, I would suggest he contact Digg and try to get a license to use the trademark. It may require a share of the ad revenues.

More important this can be his opportunity to use this publicity create a new brand. Who knows maybe some day he will be sending C&D letters.

from Michael Arrington’s bio: “I spent a few years as a corporate attorney at O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini”

just putting some context to his opinion on this

who else got C&D’s? I would imagine there to be a whole bunch of sites out there with digg in their domain.

and games1.org still has “digg” in the title of page games1.org, are they still in violation of digg’s trademark? the C&D says they can’t use digg or variations it in any “headers to any website”, which a title is a part of

a simple search on google for the word digg in the title but not on the site digg.com yields 349,000 hits. looks like those douchebags have a lot of C&D’s to send out.

http://www.google.com/search?h.....tnG=Search

Diggsig next on the chopping block? my oh my… this is gonna be one hell of a job for digg…

From tcruncher2: “I’m all for DiggGames.com - but they should have sought permission first and before trying to use Kevin’s hardwork.”

Er, doesn’t that imply that Digg could grant permission to someone using their trademark in the way DiggGames did? And couldn’t they have done so after that fact? So wouldn’t that mean a C&D was _not_ their only option?

I’m no expert in trademark law, but the comment I just quoted, if accurate, would seem to imply that Digg had another option here. If they truly didn’t want to get rid of the site (as some people have said), then it would appear that they didn’t have to.

This brings me to the point where I used to once work for corporate america and lets just say this company had 50+ mil of revenue per qtr (publicly listed) and they make no money from selling their “sh*t”. But somehow, they were profitable … like 5mil.. in profit, from lawsuits settlement. So a 100,000 here and 100,000 there… Digg got itself a great business model…that finally makes money.

As mentioned by several here, Digg had no choice, they defend the name or lose it.

In the 70’s undergound cartoonist R. Crumb didn’t trademark his “Keep on Truckin’ ” cartoon and meme and through some bizarre sequence of events this ended up costing him a lot of money.

Sometimes “the law is an ass”

Not sure what happens when a trademarked name becomes a verb and gets listed in dictionary, as in “I’ll google it.”

Crap, What a boring post … no news

The use of their name in the URL is confusing to the consumer which I think is the point here. Digg, unless they are involved in the site, would need to protect the usage of the name - that’s fine.

They way they approached it, however, really leaves something to be desired. Sending C&Ds is for serious cases where the opponent has resisted change. If a Digg employee would have called or emailed I’m sure the site would have changed its name. They could have also given permission to use the name and this is *clearly* another option which would not have diluted their ability to defend their TM.

C&Ds are also issued from larger organizations (like Marvel Comics, NFL, etc) where the occurances are frequent and a matter of policy.

As an owner of various trademarks I have licenced their use to third parties without any money being exchanged. So why does digg use such threatening behaviour? As a social app is it wise to alienate their users. Without these users the site and the digg trademark are worthless. Wise Up Guys?

This isn’t the first time this has happened.

Michael,

This issue is important for lot of companies. It will help if some legal mind can step up and do a quick writeup on how to avoid these kinds of situations in the future. This applies to both sides - Web2.0 companies and their fan-sites/meta sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark2.0

This is so bad considering all digg has is links other people’s site.

He should have changed it to “DuggGames” - it would be accurate and everyone would know what he meant!

On a more serious note, it’s a little ironic how the blogosphere rips a pound of flesh from Tim O’Reilly because an affiliate company dared to assert their conference name trademark protection…

…but when the golden boy Kevin Rose does the same thing, it’s all okay and undertsood because he “the law requires him to do it.”

Maybe it helps to be young and much better looking than Tim!

Anyway, I’m just waiting to see what happens to
http://www.crunchgames.com/

In the words of Philippine software dev legend Gil Guanio, intellectual property is garbage.

To Adam and all the other sicophants defending Digg answer this: Digg is a company that exploits the good will of the community to make it sucessful, but now it’s not just exploiting free labour and good will, it’s bitting the hand that feeds it as well? Is this a sustainable business practice?

A true Web 2.0 company wouldn’t have acted this way, sure, they might have wanted the name, but there’s a world of difference from putting the lawyers on a fan, and asking nicely to come to terms over perhaps acquiring the domain name instead. After all, say if the lawyers fee was $1k for the C&D (including delivery), wouldn’t it have been better if Digg had discussed buying the name for a similar price? I

m afraid that as much as I’ve dugg digg in the past, this, and Kevins thought police wanting to bash anyone who thinks what JCal is doing over at Netscape might have merit, is the end for me….Digg can go get you know whated….

oh give the guy a break techcrunch is riding on the tail of digg.com to

@Josh: “Er, doesn’t that imply that Digg could grant permission to someone using their trademark in the way DiggGames did? And couldn’t they have done so after that fact? So wouldn’t that mean a C&D was _not_ their only option?”

The problem with ‘granting permission’ after the fact is just that - it was done after the fact. The problem with allowing this to occur is that then it would open the ‘floodgates’ to allow anyone to use their trademark and then request permission, which would leave them open to countless cases of abuse and tarnish their name - all of which would directly contribute to them losing the rights of their trademark if deemed appropriate by the courts.

The action they have take is indeed the hardline, and is taken to deter anyone from using their trademark inappropriately in accordance with US trademark law. Had Digggames approached them before the fact, then they may have given digg ‘appropriate cause and effect’ to provide them with authorisation and also work out a deal were both would profit.

This hasn’t been the case, Digggames has profited off someone else’s success and therefore, they deserve to be shut-down. Trademark law is put in place to protect instances just like this - otherwise everyone could profit off unauthorised ’spin-offs’ and then digg.com would no longer be worth what it is.

I’ll be back for sure.

A très bientôt,

KL

Interesting article.

Welcome to IGGY Tv:

http://www.iggytv.com

@Tcruncher2: Thanks for the reply. I suppose that means the short answer is: a cease and desist was not their only option, but perhaps their best given the situation. I just wonder if there was a more elegant solution. DiggGames was a fairly innocent site, and probably did a lot to promote Digg itself. And given that it seems that most of Digg’s users don’t understand much about trademark law, this may have hurt their image more than it helps protect their brand (only time will tell, eh?–actually, I’m sure it’s yesterday’s news already).

Ah, how you know you’ve gone from a fun grass-roots feel to a more corporate, brand feel. At any rate, Digg has become too much noise and not enough substance for my tastes.

-matt

All this will probably increase his website visitors by a huge margin, he wont be to unhappy about changing the name, I for example heard of this site the first time and im sure that i will check it out now and then.