[Foundation-l] Wikipedia trademark being used incorrectly

Fri Nov 19 16:54:02 UTC 2004

[note: replying to the list, despite the conversation inadvertently
becoming 'private'; for that reason, I've left the quoted bits
untrimmed, so people can follow]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 18:21:21 -0800, Scott Nelson <scott at penguinstorm.com> wrote:
> On Nov 18.2004, at 18:07, Rowan Collins wrote:
> 
> > But isn't that a bit like saying that calling a website "blogger" or
> > "blogspot" leads to confusion with the concept of blogging?
> 
> Indeed, it's a very analogous situation. And the reason "blog" became
> such a common term was because in the early days "blogger"was driving
> the explosion of the phenomenon.
> 
> Blogger benefited from this, of course, to the point that Google bought
> 'em.

Well, yes there are advantages to matching your brand to a generic
term, but there's big disadvantages too. They'll have a tough time if
they want to claim the name back off http://blogger.de for instance,
who in the meantime can benefit not only from the same link to the
generic term as Blogger.com, but also from all the effort that has
been put into promoting "Blogger" as a brand; and that's the kind of
risk Wikipedia would face, too.

If you look at the Wikipedia articles on [[trademark]] and
[[genericized trademark]], there are some interesting examples. For
instance, Xerox apparently actively discourages use of the verb "to
xerox", since if you can use a photocopier made by Acme Corp to
"xerox" things [without Xerox challenging you], it becomes, logically,
an "Acme Xerox Machine", and they can't suddenly turn around and say
"oh, actually, we don't like you using the word that way".

Hm, interesting: I googled for "Blogger trademark", and found that
Google have apparently tried to formally register "B Blogger" - one
blogger suggested that they know full well that just "blogger" would
be considered already too generic. [Yes, I'm deliberately using
genericized trademarks] And, like Wikipedia's [[trademark]] article,
they point out that use of a trademark as a verb is a real no-no
[http://www.google.com/permissions/trademarks.html], so they must be a
little concerned about the verb "to google"; of course, it's an
unusual one, because I don't think people generally "use Yahoo! to
google" or whatever. Perhaps they could trademark it by using it as an
advertising phrase: "Don't just search for it, Google it!"...

> I'd say the key difference is that blogging took off like a rocket,
> whereas the "wiki" phenomenon seems to be a bit more snail-lake; this
> is awesome from a software development perspective - it allows a more
> organic, iterative development cycle to proceed. It does mean, however,
> that the media were SCRAMBLING for a general term such as "Blog" to
> describe the type of content that Blogger (and others) were producing,
> they don't really seem to be doing the same thing in the case of Wiki
> software.

No, the key difference is that there is already a word for wikis:
"wiki", and this is not the same as the name of our site. Why should
we give up all rights over the name of our site just because people
don't know that term yet?

> I personally wouldn't stress too much over potential confusion between
> Wikimedia/Pedia/and just plain Wiki's. I tend to give most of the media
> enough credit to understand the differences, and I think the time spent
> explaining the subtle differences would be better used promoting the
> concept of collaboration software in general, and Wiki software
> specifically.

Well, I'm not saying we should get *stressed* (or even 'stressy')
about it, but I do think that allowing 'wikipedia' to become a synonym
(or near-synonym) for 'wiki' is unnecessary and undesirable. I guess
if we were genuinely trying to promote wikis as a concept, or a
service, or a piece of software, then yes, there'd be an advantage to
people thinking "hmm, wikipedia, where can I get one". But that's
*not* what Wikipedia is there for, so we don't get much benefit from
people typing wikipedia.com because they think "wikipedia" means
"wiki" - they won't find what they're looking for. As I say, if it
came to mean "an online encyclopedia" then we'd maybe get more out of
it, but I don't think that's generally how people would start defining
it.

And there's a difference between being at the top of people's minds,
and being a generic term: take 'Encarta' in the mid-90s; people
thought "CD-ROM encyclopedia" and put "Encarta" in their drive. They
*didn't* think "Encarta" and actually put the CD-ROM of "Encyclopedia
Britannica" in (maybe they'd say "oh, Encarta or something", but
that's not saying EB *is* Encarta) - and I'm sure Microsoft were very
pleased at that.

I'm going to end with a repeat of a point I already made: if we don't
claim "Wikipedia" as a trademark - and that means being seen to
discourage its use as a generic term - anyone can use it for a rival
product. So, to put it bluntly, would you be happy to let Microsoft
rename "Encarta" to something like "MSN Wikipedia"? If you would, then
fine, we'll agree to differ; I know I wouldn't.

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]