Dec
11
SocialMail v SocialMail
Confused? We were too when we discovered in late November that Ankesh Kumar and Rajiv Dutta started a group email service called SocialMail. You may recall that we launched a group email service last year called SocialMail. We have contacted Ankesh and Rajiv and explained that their use of our trademark would likely confuse users and asked them nicely to start using another name. Their response? Let me assure you, it wasn’t very “social”.
First, they suggested that since we released the SocialMail source code under the GPL license, we removed our right to a trademark on the name SocialMail. Later Ankesh clarified that that open source is a defined business model worthy of trademark protection, but he wasn’t sure that we were running an open source project worthy of trademark protection.
Next, they suggested that you could not “protect a name when it’s not part of your core business.” His feeling was that my post indicating why we were open sourcing our tools indicated that we no longer sought trademark protection for the SocialMail brand. This, despite, the fact that we stressed that we would continue to operate the SocialMail service as well as sell it to our clients as a dedicated service.
To be clear: SocialMail is a trademark of Big in Japan. We filed an application with the USPTO (No. 77055585) and have used the term in trade for quite some time. We will continue to use the brand in the marketing of our group email service and software.
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