7 ms·

I'm curious about whether the product name "Postwoman" violates Postman's trademark and whether Postwoman will be getting a C&D letter soon, demanding that the

by jawns 7y ago

I'm curious about whether the product name "Postwoman" violates Postman's trademark and whether Postwoman will be getting a C&D letter soon, demanding that the name be changed. Normally companies don't get to claim broad trademark protection for prefixes -- Facebook has been shut down when trying to broadly enforce its trademark against anything prefixed with "Face" -- but "Postwoman" is close enough and is marketed as a competing product in the same place. Update: It seems the author is also worried about this. On her blog post announcing the service, someone raised the concern, and she acknowledged that it's a problem: https://dev.to/liyasthomas/comment/ee8m https://dev.to/liyasthomas/comment/ee8m

epx 7y ago
But it is cool.
- redisman 7y ago
  Their branding is cool but not really reliant on the name. The whole alien thing is pretty fun and simple
ebg13 7y ago
What if the name were changed to Pos2man? ^_^
- liyasthomas 7y ago
  Author here: I think this is funny because few reads it: posTWOman :/
  - ebg13 7y ago
    I wouldn't have either except that your flying saucer logo (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liyasthomas/postwoman/master/static/logo.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liyasthomas/postwoman/mast...) really emphasizes the TWO. :D
rhacker 7y ago
It's like one of those marketing things - at some point or another Postman will need to decide what to do here. If they go after them, postwoman will get tons of "free" publicity and probably get the PR win, even if it means renaming to "Post Woman" (with a space) or declaring they will fight it in court. If Postman decides NOT to pursue it, some users may simply be turned off to the fact that they decided to invade the space of Postman with a similar name. I and probably others would probably have respected a different name altogether. If Uber got a competitor called Ubor people would probably also be annoyed.
- jawns 7y ago
  > If Postman decides NOT to pursue it Choosing not to pursue it can put the trademark at risk. So even if Postman would otherwise shrug, it may need to pursue it to protect its right to the mark.
  - jMyles 7y ago
    Are you serious? Or are you satirizing the "need to defend IP or lose it" meme? I seriously cannot imagine the word "postman" falling into genericide on this basis.
    - joemi 7y ago
      Trademarks have to be defended or else you can indeed lose it. That's a fact. Copyrights on the other hand are not the same. You may be confusing the two and lumping them all together under "IP" but there are many legal differences between different types of IP.
      - jMyles 7y ago
        I am very familiar, and have formally studied, trademark genericization. Your patronizing comment is not helpful. Can you point to a mark that you think was genercized in a similar fashion to what you project happening if Postman does not pursue legal action against Postwoman?
djsumdog 7y ago
Huh .. Postman is MPL-2.0 is seems, but it is also a commercial operation (and even non-commercial organizations often hold and protect trademarks like Mozilla). It's not a joke or broken project, so it wouldn't be protected under parody. I too am curious if Postman will go after this project to defend their trademark.
rohan1024 7y ago
https://www.openbook.social https://www.openbook.social got into trouble for this exactly.
bacondude3 7y ago
Not well educated in trademark law, but given how The South Butt, LLC fared, I'd guess Postman could win if they decided to sue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt
perspective1 7y ago
IANAL but the basic sniff test is could "Postwoman" be confused with "Postman?" I think the answer is yes. With the author calling it an alternative to "Postman," you have the author acknowledging Postman is a strong trademark. And it's not like it's the only one available fitting the "{HTTP-METHOD}{MAN|WOMAN}" construct-- you could rename it "HeadWoman" and probably be okay.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  And I don’t think GETwoman or PUTWoman would be good either, as there’s other apps for that.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  If she named it Going Postal, how old would one need to be to get the reference?
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
I could imagine the optics of going after a project named "Postwoman" would lead Postman to not pursue this.
- adventured 7y ago
  Zero chance of that being a primary issue when you're dealing with a directly competing product. If they allow their trademark to go unprotected from an extremely blatant hit like this, their trademark might as well be worthless. Having a competing product in the market using an intentionally similar name, is a large value debasement for the Postman brand & offering (not to mention the $58m in venture capital that is betting on the value of those things). Is Postwoman from the Postman company? They're similar products? Are they competing products from the same company? The sound you hear is millions of dollars in venture capital being flushed down the toilet. No serious company is going to hold back on a legal response just because you staple woman/women/her/she to their existing trademarks and seek to compete head-on with their products or services.
xmprt 7y ago
Trademark laws are about consumer protection which is why companies must enforce their trademark or they risk losing it. In this case, I initially thought Postwoman was a spinoff of Postman built by the same team (not sure why they would do this but I guess representation is all the rage nowadays). If a consumer could mistake the product as a different one then it's grounds for trademark violation. Disclamer: I am not a lawyer but I have at least a high level understanding of trademark law.
waterdownship 7y ago
Trademarks are protected to prevent fraud and impersonation of other companies. So we don't want to accidentally mistake a e.g. gougle product as a google one. That was the very legal intention of trademark laws. In the case of postwoman, it's kind of hard to imagine anyone would mistake it for postman. So it's unlikely postman would win a lawsuit against it.
liyasthomas 7y ago
There's lot of projects like: Next, Nest, Nuxt.. I wonder how this would apply to them.

by jawns 7y ago

epx 7y ago

But it is cool.

redisman 7y ago
Their branding is cool but not really reliant on the name. The whole alien thing is pretty fun and simple

ebg13 7y ago

What if the name were changed to Pos2man? ^_^

liyasthomas 7y ago
Author here: I think this is funny because few reads it: posTWOman :/
- ebg13 7y ago
  I wouldn't have either except that your flying saucer logo (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liyasthomas/postwoman/master/static/logo.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liyasthomas/postwoman/mast...) really emphasizes the TWO. :D

rhacker 7y ago

It's like one of those marketing things - at some point or another Postman will need to decide what to do here. If they go after them, postwoman will get tons of "free" publicity and probably get the PR win, even if it means renaming to "Post Woman" (with a space) or declaring they will fight it in court. If Postman decides NOT to pursue it, some users may simply be turned off to the fact that they decided to invade the space of Postman with a similar name. I and probably others would probably have respected a different name altogether. If Uber got a competitor called Ubor people would probably also be annoyed.

jawns 7y ago
> If Postman decides NOT to pursue it Choosing not to pursue it can put the trademark at risk. So even if Postman would otherwise shrug, it may need to pursue it to protect its right to the mark.
- jMyles 7y ago
  Are you serious? Or are you satirizing the "need to defend IP or lose it" meme? I seriously cannot imagine the word "postman" falling into genericide on this basis.
  - joemi 7y ago
    Trademarks have to be defended or else you can indeed lose it. That's a fact. Copyrights on the other hand are not the same. You may be confusing the two and lumping them all together under "IP" but there are many legal differences between different types of IP.
    - jMyles 7y ago
      I am very familiar, and have formally studied, trademark genericization. Your patronizing comment is not helpful. Can you point to a mark that you think was genercized in a similar fashion to what you project happening if Postman does not pursue legal action against Postwoman?

djsumdog 7y ago

Huh .. Postman is MPL-2.0 is seems, but it is also a commercial operation (and even non-commercial organizations often hold and protect trademarks like Mozilla). It's not a joke or broken project, so it wouldn't be protected under parody. I too am curious if Postman will go after this project to defend their trademark.

rohan1024 7y ago

https://www.openbook.social https://www.openbook.social got into trouble for this exactly.

bacondude3 7y ago

Not well educated in trademark law, but given how The South Butt, LLC fared, I'd guess Postman could win if they decided to sue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Butt

perspective1 7y ago

IANAL but the basic sniff test is could "Postwoman" be confused with "Postman?" I think the answer is yes. With the author calling it an alternative to "Postman," you have the author acknowledging Postman is a strong trademark. And it's not like it's the only one available fitting the "{HTTP-METHOD}{MAN|WOMAN}" construct-- you could rename it "HeadWoman" and probably be okay.

jedieaston 7y ago
And I don’t think GETwoman or PUTWoman would be good either, as there’s other apps for that.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
If she named it Going Postal, how old would one need to be to get the reference?

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

I could imagine the optics of going after a project named "Postwoman" would lead Postman to not pursue this.

adventured 7y ago
Zero chance of that being a primary issue when you're dealing with a directly competing product. If they allow their trademark to go unprotected from an extremely blatant hit like this, their trademark might as well be worthless. Having a competing product in the market using an intentionally similar name, is a large value debasement for the Postman brand & offering (not to mention the $58m in venture capital that is betting on the value of those things). Is Postwoman from the Postman company? They're similar products? Are they competing products from the same company? The sound you hear is millions of dollars in venture capital being flushed down the toilet. No serious company is going to hold back on a legal response just because you staple woman/women/her/she to their existing trademarks and seek to compete head-on with their products or services.

xmprt 7y ago

Trademark laws are about consumer protection which is why companies must enforce their trademark or they risk losing it. In this case, I initially thought Postwoman was a spinoff of Postman built by the same team (not sure why they would do this but I guess representation is all the rage nowadays). If a consumer could mistake the product as a different one then it's grounds for trademark violation. Disclamer: I am not a lawyer but I have at least a high level understanding of trademark law.

waterdownship 7y ago

Trademarks are protected to prevent fraud and impersonation of other companies. So we don't want to accidentally mistake a e.g. gougle product as a google one. That was the very legal intention of trademark laws. In the case of postwoman, it's kind of hard to imagine anyone would mistake it for postman. So it's unlikely postman would win a lawsuit against it.

liyasthomas 7y ago

There's lot of projects like: Next, Nest, Nuxt.. I wonder how this would apply to them.