Read The Latest Linden Statement on Second Life®'s New Trademark Policies, Take The Survey

Opinion Polls & Market Research

The Lindens posted another clarification to their new trademark policies, and it addresses most of the questions raised by New World Notes readers. 

Check it out, read the Comments, and take this survey, which runs until the 28th.  I'll do my best to stress any remaining concerns to the Lindens for yet another follow-up.

Update, 10:54am: Disregard the typo, this survey is for the April 18th statement.  (Thanks, Tat.)

Update 2, 4/23: Bumped, in case recent announcements have changed your opinion any.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

Hamlet, this is te first time I see you use the registered trademark symbol in the title of a blog post. Is that because you, too, had remaining questions, and are they solved now?

[Ann Otoole]

Maybe Hamlet should put that trademark symbol next to the 2 words "Second" and "Life" on the logo nwn-logo.gif. Wouldn't that cover all subsequent instances of those 2 common words strung together on any page here?

[DD Ra]

This clarifications are ...at least real clarifications. The blog post is clear but the policy is as just silly as before.

It will do bad publicity to The World Of the Two Initials Who Shall Not Be Named, will stop interesting sites... so the Company from Frisco Wich Shall Not Be Named either is arming it's own image...

The simplest way of respecting the TOS : not citing the name, or initials or using any logo of the Mysterious Vitual World who Shall Not Be Named... witch means stopping all free publicity for them.

On my personal blog for SL I will probably use the term Metaverse (Métavers en french)...

[CyFishy Traveler]

They still kinda dodged the question of why the simple rules we happily abided by for yay these many years got suddenly changed to head-breakingly complex ones and why the graphics that THEY GAVE TO US aren't okay anymore.

[Court]

this seems like something decided by Legal for CYA reasons than anything else. I hardly think they'll start sending letters to residents to threaten legal action. If they do, they're crazy, and their bran will be identified as something to avoid.

[Arcadian Vanalten]

Actually, this clarification kinda works for me. Wish they'd been that forthright in the beginning, though. I don't mind LL protecting their trademark (tell ya the truth, I thought it was kinda weird that they weren't doing it before), but the sudden change w/o any explanation, and the obtuse communication of the branding center's first statements really complicated the transition, I think.

I DO still think it'd be nice if they had a copiable example disclaimer for us to put on our blogs/websites/whatever to use as a template to satisfy the conditions of use. The one I put on mine fits the letter, I think, but I'm mostly guessing at its construction.