Kevin Rose Wants You to Avoid Using the Name “Digg”
Still on intellectual property, I didn’t know you could trademark common-sounding names and prevent other people from using variations. This is much like the variations of “Google” (which may include “Go Ogle”), the owners of which Google has apparently been suing successfully. However, in this case, it’s not some obscure made-up name. “Digg” sounds very much like “dig.” And yes, that’s a dictionary word to you illiterate scum.
Kevin Rose (poster boy for Web 2.0) doesn’t want you to use the word “digg” on your website names or domains.
We don’t want to shut anyone down (not even the clone sites), all we ask is that you avoid using the name ‘digg’ in your website names/domains. We’re looking to see if we have any other options.
No matter how nicely you try to put it, Kevin, it sounds like “lay off our name” to us.
So I guess if we trademark the name “Jack of all blogs,” we could legally prevent anyone from setting up a site named “Jack off all blogs”.
[...] Now that we’ve cleared that, let me tell you about a controversy that my favorite blogging software has been involved in lately. WordPress is going the way of DIGG. Remember our JOAB post before about DIGG founders not wanting you to use “digg” on your site without permission? Well, Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress, seems to dislike the idea of people using the WordPress term on their domains. [...]
Jack of All Blogs » Blog Archive » Trademarks and Fair Use: The Case of WordPress said this on November 2, 2006 10:45 pm