7 ms·

There's a particular irony that the Moz folks think that the Doz name is too similar to be allowed, when they're using an abbreviation for Mozilla that has been

There's a particular irony that the Moz folks think that the Doz name is too similar to be allowed, when they're using an abbreviation for Mozilla that has been around for years and years.

ValentineC 13y ago
Heh, as someone who's only heard about Moz/SEOmoz recently, I did think that they were related to Mozilla in some way. On the other hand, it could be trademark law that's screwed up, because I understand that there may be dilution at stake if they don't defend their trademark.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  there may be dilution at stake if they don't defend their trademark I don't buy it. Give me an example of a company that lost trademark protection because they merely allowed another company with a similar name to exist and I'll eat my hat.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    And it's not really a similar name. You can't even mistype moz to doz.
    - chopsueyar 13y ago
      Not a Dvorak keyboard user, eh?
  - Afforess 13y ago
    It doesn't matter, you have the responsibility to defend your trademark at every opportunity. If in the future, the court looks and sees that you didn't try to defend your trademark, even in grey or obviously incorrect cases, they could decide that it was no longer a trademark. Trademark laws suck.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      Since when does "defending your trademark" means using legal bullying against people with marks somewhat similar from afar in the fog if you're legally blind?
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        I object to your use of the word "fog" above. That is confusingly similar to our trademarked term "Fogbeam". Expect to hear from our attorneys soon.
        gingerlime 13y ago
        Hope you don't get in trouble with fog creek. It sounds kinda the same and there's the word software on both your homepages.
        mindcrime 13y ago
        That's a good point. Maybe we should take an aggressive stance and file a pre-emptive lawsuit!
  - Bill_Dimm 13y ago
    Here is a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized...
    - masklinn 13y ago
      Operative section of GP's comment: > because they merely allowed another company with a similar name to exist reason for genericization: > lost legal protection as trademarks by becoming the common name of the relevant product or service
      - Bill_Dimm 13y ago
        I'm not sure I see your point. It's a two step process (IANAL): 1) fail to defend your trademark, 2) broad usage becomes popular, so you lose your mark. Sure, you may not lose your mark without (2), but you don't get to (2) without (1) and your only opportunity to stop the process of losing your mark is at (1). So, MartinCron's claim is perhaps not invalidated by the list, since those names have the additional property of having become popular, but how does that technicality translate to whether or not SEOMoz needed to take action? Is the idea that it is OK for SEOMoz to do nothing under the assumption that Doz will never become popular? By the way, I'm in no way siding with SEOMoz here -- I don't think it's clear that they deserved to get that mark (with the Mozilla confusion) in the first place, or that Doz is confusingly similar, but if they feel it is confusingly similar I don't see how you can argue that they can sit back and do nothing without having a risk of losing the mark. Edit: Or, is your point perhaps that "Doz" and "Moz" are different words, so even popularization of "Doz" would not cause the "Moz" mark to be diluted?
        masklinn 13y ago
        > It's a two step process (IANAL): 1) fail to defend your trademark, 2) broad usage becomes popular, so you lose your mark. Sure, you may not lose your mark without (2), but you don't get to (2) without (1) and your only opportunity to stop the process of losing your mark is at (1). No, that's not how marks become genericized. Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company. Defending your trademark in court doesn't actually help against genericization, there's no step 1 then step 2 there's only step 2. Step 1 is irrelevant. > Is the idea that it is OK for SEOMoz to do nothing under the assumption that Doz will never become popular? If "doz" became genericized, Doz would lose its mark, not moz.
  - BrianEatWorld 13y ago
    I can't give an example of one being lost, but thats the same reasoning Ford used for going after Ferrari last year. Whats worse is that wasn't even a real car, the F-150 Italia was their F1 chassis. A bit silly given Ford's F-150 is a midsize truck.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      There's also strong precedent of this not being a problem. Saturn, Lexus, and Lincoln all sold passenger cars with "LS" in the name. I'm even more likely to mistake a Lincoln for a Lexus than a Ferrari for a Ford, but somehow we managed.
  - killerpopiller 13y ago
    Get your hat ready, there is one example: the german newspaper TAZ "die tageszeitung" used it's paw logo since 1979 but never trademarked it. It is after all a libertarian newspaper. The outdoor clothes company Jack Wolfskin secured it's look alike logo in 1982 and successfukky forbade the TAZ to use it's logo on merchandising.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      That isn't the same thing at all. I was talking about similar names and existing trademarks, neither of which apply.
cabinguy 13y ago
I'm pretty sure SEOMoz.org was a play on DMOZ.org, originally.
qeorge 13y ago
Its intentional too. Rand specifically choose the name SEOMoz to benefit from the brand confusion. From the horse's mouth (Mixergy interview): "Andrew: What does SEOmoz mean? Rand: When we started up, we were looking for a name that was short. That had the word SEO in there so that people would know what the blog was about. And, I was a big fan of the Mozilla Foundation, with DMoz and ChefMoz. What was the other ones that they were doing at the time? There was, like, MapMoz, there was a bunch of them at the time that were coming out. That were based around this open source, weird transparent. [...] So, that was SEOmoz, was taking SEO and combining it with the moz ethos. There you go." Source: http://mixergy.com/seomoz-rand-fishkin-interview/ http://mixergy.com/seomoz-rand-fishkin-interview/
- lingben 13y ago
  Not only that but just recently them moved from SEOmoz which is arguably more different from Mozilla to MOZ which is just a shortened form of Mozilla
  - masklinn 13y ago
    And has been used as such by mozilla for years: it's their official vendor prefix for CSS properties their official vendor prefix for non-standard javascript APIs (either draft standards or proprietary extensions, such as Firefox OS APIs): * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Mozilla_Extensions?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Web%2FCSS%2FCSS_Reference%2FMozilla_Extensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/M... * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MozActivity https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MozActivity * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mozFullScreen https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mo... * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requestAnimationFrame?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Web%2FAPI%2Fwindow.mozRequestAnimationFrame https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requ...

There's a particular irony that the Moz folks think that the Doz name is too similar to be allowed, when they're using an abbreviation for Mozilla that has been around for years and years.

ValentineC 13y ago

Heh, as someone who's only heard about Moz/SEOmoz recently, I did think that they were related to Mozilla in some way. On the other hand, it could be trademark law that's screwed up, because I understand that there may be dilution at stake if they don't defend their trademark.

MartinCron 13y ago
there may be dilution at stake if they don't defend their trademark I don't buy it. Give me an example of a company that lost trademark protection because they merely allowed another company with a similar name to exist and I'll eat my hat.
- masklinn 13y ago
  And it's not really a similar name. You can't even mistype moz to doz.
  - chopsueyar 13y ago
    Not a Dvorak keyboard user, eh?
- Afforess 13y ago
  It doesn't matter, you have the responsibility to defend your trademark at every opportunity. If in the future, the court looks and sees that you didn't try to defend your trademark, even in grey or obviously incorrect cases, they could decide that it was no longer a trademark. Trademark laws suck.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    Since when does "defending your trademark" means using legal bullying against people with marks somewhat similar from afar in the fog if you're legally blind?
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      I object to your use of the word "fog" above. That is confusingly similar to our trademarked term "Fogbeam". Expect to hear from our attorneys soon.
      - gingerlime 13y ago
        Hope you don't get in trouble with fog creek. It sounds kinda the same and there's the word software on both your homepages.
        mindcrime 13y ago
        That's a good point. Maybe we should take an aggressive stance and file a pre-emptive lawsuit!
- Bill_Dimm 13y ago
  Here is a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized...
  - masklinn 13y ago
    Operative section of GP's comment: > because they merely allowed another company with a similar name to exist reason for genericization: > lost legal protection as trademarks by becoming the common name of the relevant product or service
    - Bill_Dimm 13y ago
      I'm not sure I see your point. It's a two step process (IANAL): 1) fail to defend your trademark, 2) broad usage becomes popular, so you lose your mark. Sure, you may not lose your mark without (2), but you don't get to (2) without (1) and your only opportunity to stop the process of losing your mark is at (1). So, MartinCron's claim is perhaps not invalidated by the list, since those names have the additional property of having become popular, but how does that technicality translate to whether or not SEOMoz needed to take action? Is the idea that it is OK for SEOMoz to do nothing under the assumption that Doz will never become popular? By the way, I'm in no way siding with SEOMoz here -- I don't think it's clear that they deserved to get that mark (with the Mozilla confusion) in the first place, or that Doz is confusingly similar, but if they feel it is confusingly similar I don't see how you can argue that they can sit back and do nothing without having a risk of losing the mark. Edit: Or, is your point perhaps that "Doz" and "Moz" are different words, so even popularization of "Doz" would not cause the "Moz" mark to be diluted?
      - masklinn 13y ago
        > It's a two step process (IANAL): 1) fail to defend your trademark, 2) broad usage becomes popular, so you lose your mark. Sure, you may not lose your mark without (2), but you don't get to (2) without (1) and your only opportunity to stop the process of losing your mark is at (1). No, that's not how marks become genericized. Marks become genericized when the consumer's mind uses the mark as a word for the category rather than as a specific product/line/company. Defending your trademark in court doesn't actually help against genericization, there's no step 1 then step 2 there's only step 2. Step 1 is irrelevant. > Is the idea that it is OK for SEOMoz to do nothing under the assumption that Doz will never become popular? If "doz" became genericized, Doz would lose its mark, not moz.
- BrianEatWorld 13y ago
  I can't give an example of one being lost, but thats the same reasoning Ford used for going after Ferrari last year. Whats worse is that wasn't even a real car, the F-150 Italia was their F1 chassis. A bit silly given Ford's F-150 is a midsize truck.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    There's also strong precedent of this not being a problem. Saturn, Lexus, and Lincoln all sold passenger cars with "LS" in the name. I'm even more likely to mistake a Lincoln for a Lexus than a Ferrari for a Ford, but somehow we managed.
- killerpopiller 13y ago
  Get your hat ready, there is one example: the german newspaper TAZ "die tageszeitung" used it's paw logo since 1979 but never trademarked it. It is after all a libertarian newspaper. The outdoor clothes company Jack Wolfskin secured it's look alike logo in 1982 and successfukky forbade the TAZ to use it's logo on merchandising.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    That isn't the same thing at all. I was talking about similar names and existing trademarks, neither of which apply.

cabinguy 13y ago

I'm pretty sure SEOMoz.org was a play on DMOZ.org, originally.

qeorge 13y ago

Its intentional too. Rand specifically choose the name SEOMoz to benefit from the brand confusion. From the horse's mouth (Mixergy interview): "Andrew: What does SEOmoz mean? Rand: When we started up, we were looking for a name that was short. That had the word SEO in there so that people would know what the blog was about. And, I was a big fan of the Mozilla Foundation, with DMoz and ChefMoz. What was the other ones that they were doing at the time? There was, like, MapMoz, there was a bunch of them at the time that were coming out. That were based around this open source, weird transparent. [...] So, that was SEOmoz, was taking SEO and combining it with the moz ethos. There you go." Source: http://mixergy.com/seomoz-rand-fishkin-interview/ http://mixergy.com/seomoz-rand-fishkin-interview/

lingben 13y ago
Not only that but just recently them moved from SEOmoz which is arguably more different from Mozilla to MOZ which is just a shortened form of Mozilla
- masklinn 13y ago
  And has been used as such by mozilla for years: it's their official vendor prefix for CSS properties their official vendor prefix for non-standard javascript APIs (either draft standards or proprietary extensions, such as Firefox OS APIs): * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Mozilla_Extensions?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Web%2FCSS%2FCSS_Reference%2FMozilla_Extensions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/M... * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MozActivity https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MozActivity * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mozFullScreen https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mo... * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requestAnimationFrame?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Web%2FAPI%2Fwindow.mozRequestAnimationFrame https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requ...