Tom Raftery received a cease and desist letter from the General Counsel of CMP Media, who work with Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle to put on the Web 2.0 Conference each fall. The letter demands that Tom stop his use of the term “Web 2.0″ in a conference he’s putting on. The letter states that the use of the term is under a trademark application in connection with live events, conferences, etc.
My favorite line of the letter: “…the public have come to associate the mark Web 2.0 and the Web 2.0 Conference with CMP and MediaLive.”
I have to say that when I think of web 2.0, CMP is not the first name that pops into my head. O’Reilly and Battelle sure. CMP, no.
I sense that a lynching is about to occur in the blogosphere, and Tim O’Reilly is going to be the person lynched. Bloggers aren’t going to trouble themselves with the fact that this letter is from CMP, not O’Reilly (Tim may not know about it).
They are going to shoot first and ask questions later - Shel Israel, for example, wrote “O’Reilly has just put himself on the fast track to reputation implosion” and he may be right.
Update: O’Reilly responds.
I’ve seen quite a number of conferences that include the term “Web 2.0″ in their title - those were not the only words used in the conference title though. Ask first or ask later, this move is going to be controversial to say the least.
Does the filed TM apply to Ireland? I’m no lawyer but many TMs have limited jurisdiction.
I’d go for Web 2.1 as someone else suggested.
The lawyers work for CMP, which filed for the service mark, not directly for O’Reilly. Tim’s guilty by association only.
Hach, lawyers are just great
At least for me the terms “pending application” and “demand” don’t really mix all that well 
Liam, thanks. I’ve substantially rewritten the post. I’m wondering if Tim even knew about this before it went out.
Seems rather doubtful. O’Reilly’s legal team can’t be that clueless.
CMP is just trying to protect marketing collateral–a daunting undertaking in Ireland wihen all you have is a pending American trademark in your back pocket. That won’t get you a cease&desist order from a European judge.
Oh, please, if the lawyers are dumb enough to not think of the PR implications, they really have no clue what CMP is all about in the first place… and if they did think of it, can you poissibly see them not seeking Tim’s approval? This is a nonsense either way… just does not add up.
Let’s run a pool on how long it will be before Tim publicly backs away from this.
according to Radar, seems like Tim’s on vacation. CMP put foot in mouth, O’Reilly will help them remove it… which will take time & energy, and be watched by many bloggers closely.
That said, feels like a conversation not a legal letter would have been appropriate. I do agree O’Reilly/CMP have invested a lot of effort to build up the brand equity around the “Web 2.0 CONFERENCE” at the very least, and the way they named the IT@Cork conference wasn’t very clear. honest mistake i’m sure, but probably could have been resolved without a legal letter.
anyway, guessing if Tim weren’t on vacation & he were asked, he might have handled it differently…
doesn’t feel like a huge issue, although some folks might make it out to be.
- dmc
I was wrong. I jumped to the conclusion that Tim O was too smart for this sort of nonsense. Let the mob convene.
Yep… they had prior knowledge that CMP had chosen to deal with the matter in this fashion. And Sarah Winge, O’Reilly’s communications VP “asked” a new employee to explain it all. Error compounded. I don’t know what anyone on the O’Reilly/CMP side of this dust-up was thinking. The merits of their IP claim notwithstanding, this could have been handled so much better.
Get your own “Tim O’Reilly, Original Web 2.0 Asshole” graphic here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/153656919/
It’s Creative Commons licensed and all, feel free to use it all you like!
you say Update: Tim responds but all I see is some low-level functionary writing a very boilerplate response, with no apology and no sense of just how badly they’ve stepped in it.
I actually do understand their need to protect conferences from being confused with theirs, but the way they’ve gone about it is ridiculous and has cost them.
Tell me–when is the last time any of you went n vacation and were not connected to email and the internet? Hw about not being reached by cell phone when a crisis occurs. Mchael, you accuse me of shooting too fast, but if you read more slowly you would see that I said that Tim needed to react quickly or there would be a reputation implosion. He did not respoind quickly. His PR person did. Does anyone really believe that in this day and age, he is unaware of the situation? Wether Tim knew when the letter went ut or not is not my issue. My issue is that the leading evangelist for open source has let this conversation go on for 36 hours without participating. BTW, Michael, have a nice conference in Seattle. What are you calling it?
Whither Tim, indeed… O’Reilly takes an unprecedented beating online (but not in the mass media) and the CEO fails to step in. Now his fans claim to await “the return of the king”, as if he could manipulate history like Wikipedia and simply revert a couple of days. The damage is done.
They have to back down. Battelle starts to in a comment on his post http://battellemedia.com/archives/002596.php — though they’ll have to get CMP’s buy-in, which could take real time.
Why not something trademark something like (the bit in bold) - “O’Reilly Conferences present ‘The O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference - 2006′”.
Trade mark friendly, Web 2.0 friendly, protects the O’Reilly conference name and still shares the ‘Web 2.0′ pharse with everybody else - how hard can this be?
Mike, you are a former corporate attorney with extensive technology experience. Hence, you’re the perfect person to answer this question: What’s your legal perspective on this issue? Please tell us what you think.
Personally, I believe that everyone has the right to protect his intellectual property. But it appears that O’Reilly may not have protected his. A genericized trademark is “a trademark or brand name which is often used as the colloquial description for a particular type of product or service as a result of widespread popular or cultural usage.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark
I have read that in America and other countries, for years, there have been numerous conferences and other events with “Web 2.0” in the name. http://blog.softtechvc.com/2006/05/the_web_20_lega.html
If this is true, then since O’Reilly and his company did not previously enforce their rights and send Cease & Desist letters to *those* conference organizers, it seems to me that “Web 2.0” has been allowed to become a genericized trademark. Hence, trademark rights may no longer be enforceable or at least it may be difficult for O’Reilly and crew to now legally enforce their rights. A long list of other genericized trademarks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks
Also, see the very brief opinion of The Trademark Blog on this topic: http://www.schwimmerlegal.com/2006/05/web_20_v_web_20.html