How I Got Fired from the Job I Invented | Hacker News Reader

How I Got Fired from the Job I Invented

aroundtheworldin80jobs.com

296 pointscitricsquid72 comments

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The internet is a funny place a guy with no real traction on his project (sadly because his idea sounds great ).

68 subscribers 16,535 views Youtube

2,2k Twitter

just has to reach out to the right channels reddit/twitter/fb to start a PR disaster for a Adecco.

Around the world in 80 (days/jobs/parties/x)

Lets see how they will turn it around, they got bitten by a mistake of not doing enough market research.

they got bitten by a mistake of not doing enough market research

Alternatively, they don't see it as a mistake at all (as you pointed out, a whopping 68 subscribers) and did the math and decided to go with it.

As far as I can tell the agency responsible for the campaign is Mortierbrigade [1]. I haven't been able to confirm it for sure but the original source [2] I found it for seems to be quite knowledge about the Belgian advertising scene.

Adecco's/Mortierbrigade attempts to defend themselves on Facebook have been rather halfhearted so far.[3]

[1]: http://mortierbrigade.com [2]: http://creativecriminals.com/online/adecco-way-to-work/ [3]: https://www.facebook.com/AdeccoWayToWork/posts/5588127241617...

Halfhearted is a charitable way to put it.

They made it clear that they see nothing wrong with this in principle, they act as if it's all an accidental naming collision, and they start right out of the gate with the old "we're sorry some people are upset" non-apology.

How distinctive is the actual video of the "doppelganger"? I'm genuinely curious, since it's now been taken down.

The name alone could easily have been an accidental collision from a concept developed independently; I'm pretty sure I've searched for available around the world in 80... variants as possible name ideas for a travel site, and I'd never seen Turner's site before (I have read Jules Verne though)

It's a shitty excuse for a nonapology even if it was a genuine accident though.

Considering the actual name of their project is his exact blog URL [1], I can't imagine they looked that hard to see if anyone else had the idea first.

[1] http://aroundtheworldin80jobs.com/

"Around the world in 80 days" is a well-known title, it's not impossible to comes up with using the same title for "job" related topic.

Of course. But you google names you come up with to check if somebody didn't found it earlier. It's hard not to do that.

I saw the video, it was absolutely no accident. They tried to imitate the actual guy.

I don't understand why they think it has to be a "mutually beneficial" solution. That would imply they get benefit out of this too, and they haven't done anything that warrants them getting any kind of benefit out of this blogger's project.

I find nothing capturing about a European hipster running around the world trying out jobs. Especially when I add in the thought that the idea was so clearly jacked from someone else.

Unfortunately thats what a large number of ad agencies spend their time doing. Selling ideas they see online off to brands without contacting or paying the original creator

On the other side of the fence: a lot of the time clients will actually send stuff they've seen online to their ad agencies and ask for it to be 'repurposed'. It happens both ways.

Clients are expected to have no idea what they're doing. That's why they hired the experts, where such behavior is no longer dumb but disgusting.

I'm surprised that anyone can get a trademark on "Around the World in 80 Xs." I would think that you'd have to get "Around the World in 80 Dishes with Slavko Slobovich" or "John Johnson's Around the World in 80 Trees." Maybe changing the number of Xs or going "Around the Channel Islands" or something.

I would think anything built on the bare single variable snowclone would be too cliche to be exclusive.

I hate to be a downer, but this is why Trademark law was invented. If you don't or can't get a trademark on your brand, it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time, money, and energy promoting it.

There are a lot of slimy people in the world, and if you aren't protected eventually one of them will take advantage. Even a trademark might not stop it, but it gives you some ammo to fight back.

You don't lose trademark rights just because someone else files a trademark on a name you're already using in commerce prior to that registration. In fact, trademark rights are common law rights -- you don't need to file a trademark to claim a priority right to that mark.

In this case, his prior usage trumps any attempt for Adecco to claim ownership on the mark for their subsequent usage -- no matter how much they try to register those rights with the government. A trademark registration is exactly what it sounds like a - registration of a mark with the government. It doesn't give you any rights to ownership over a mark that pre-existed the registration.

You're confusing copyright and trademark. If he didn't challenge the trademark registration in the required period he will have a nearly impossible time challenging it now.

You don't lose rights to a pre-existing mark, even if someone subsequently registers it. And a challenge is only valid during an opposition period for a registered mark. This mark is not yet registered! So yes, he could challenge it during opposition.

As indicated by the USPTO TESS Database, the mark was filed on April 9, 2013, but it hasn't even been processed, let alone registered by the US PTO [5]. This means that the opposition period hasn't come yet. That means that oh yes sirree, Turner definitely has a chance to oppose this mark! And oppose he will. And win he will. So, nothing lost here. A TM symbol confers no rights to the claimant other than common law rights, which Turner has a pre-existing claim on.

But he wouldn't even need to challenge it - a subsequent registration does not entitle ownership for pre-existing marks. See all the citations below [1-4]

[1] http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/common.html

[2] http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#_Toc275426712

[3] http://tcattorney.typepad.com/ip/2008/06/what-are-common.htm...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Enforcing_rights

[5] http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:jyex1k...

Ah, great. So he does have time to oppose it. Even though it's relatively simple to oppose he'll probably still have to put up a ~$6K retainer for a lawyer to oppose. And if he wanted to challenge their use of his trademark (even though he didn't register yet) he'd probably have to pay out ~$25K for a retainer, but realistically, he'd probably spend around $50k to challenge use of the trademark.

Further, if he wasn't using the trademark for commerce but the new registration is using it for commerce he isn't guaranteed to win. Trademark is not the same as copyright - that's why apple can take over the apple trademark for music.

That's all fine, but in the meantime his business model has fallen apart and his opposition to the marketing firm has zero economic value. He can relaunch, most likely, but it's going to be a lot more expensive and time-consuming than filing for a mark in the first place would have been.

Nobody has registered anything. They're claiming it as a Trademark (TM) not as a Registered Trademark (R).

Exactly. This is why this has nothing to do with Trademark law. They are stepping on a mark that's already being used in commerce by someone else. Their attempt to claim ownership through TM doesn't really grant them any rights in usage. And yes, they are attempting to register the mark. It won't go far.

His failure to register it means he can't sue them for damages either; at most he can obstruct their acquisition of trademark status. A fine example of why startups should have a legal strategy as well as a technical one, a marketing one, and so on.

In this case I don't think a trademark would be possible, being based almost entirely on another popular (possibly trademarked) phrase. Has Adecco actually tried to claim trademark for themselves?

Yes - they attempted to register it on April 9, 2013, according to the USPTO. But it hasn't even been examined yet. My guess is that it will fail on a common law basis, and even if it doesn't, it will be subject to an opposition period, and it will be opposed. And it will not be granted.

See here: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:jyex1k...

Apparently their reaction page is up - http://www.adecco.com/en-US/Media/Pages/reaction.aspx

That's a pretty lame (and tone deaf) response. Not only will it do little to dampen the Internet Furies, but it will probably just make it worse. They need to make it right with Turner ASAP in a public manner. Otherwise, Hell Hath No Fury like an Internet Scorned.

"We’re sorry for some recent negative comments." What a poorly written reaction.

"We've worked to resolve this and to create a mutually beneficial solution" - well, go on, what is it!?

This is about as bad as "I'm sorry you feel that way."

It's the complete opposite of an apology.

Was this written by a robot?

Sounds like: We are sorry we got caught.

Not down, but 403'd.

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aroundt...

> Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

My guess is that the page is in fact down (probably MySQL is stopped), but that the permissions on the 500 error page are set wrong and thus Apache is returning a 403 as it tries to show the error page, instead of a 500.

Perhaps Adecco/PR firm reached out to the author, to solve the matter. Or that is what we can hope at least.

The site appears to be password protected now so something definitely happened. Or the site just got overloaded and the author decided to pull the plug.

The whole site is down, which makes me wonder if they exceeded their bandwidth due to coverage of this. If so, at least the story is getting attention.

Another possibility is that they were advised by council to take it down, but it does no good to speculate.

"website is still being worked on. Stay tuned."

https://twitter.com/80worldjobs/status/348094066929590272

Amusing: Adecco's website has a live twitter feed widget on it. And it's a constant stream of tweets ripping on Adecco for this.

That's brilliant. One of the business development guys I work for was showing me a company that aggregates social media feeds for integration into your website, I asked how these get filtered, "no, they just get everything". Never understood why you want something displayed on your website you have NO control over!

This will be a good case study to present :)

They must have turned that off now?

It's still on: https://www.adeccowaytowork.com/en/around-the-world

As of 2:03pm EST- no. They are getting destroyed (rightfully so).

It's still up

Sounds like an opportunity for Turner to use this situation and the attention this can generate to amplify his own idea, brand and work.

If he used "Around the world in 80 jobs" prior to their use, they shouldn't have received a trademark.

A (TM) mark is an indication of a trademark claim, not an actual registered trademark which would be (R). Clearly, it's not a particularly defensible claim as there's identifiable prior usage.

You don't even need to register a trademark to have common law rights. In the US at least.

That's not how trademark works.

It depends, you can win a trademark dispute if you have been using the mark for a sufficent period before someone else registers it. Assuming that a trademark qualifies for protection, rights to a trademark can be acquired in one of two ways: (1) by being the first to use the mark in commerce; or (2) by being the first to register the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO"). http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm

Hilarious watching the live twitter feed on their (adecco's) homepage.

It's funny watching the twitter feed on Adecco's website:

https://www.adeccowaytowork.com/en/around-the-world

It blows my mind that http://www.adecco.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx is up today...

It seems like every other issue of Private Eye has something almost exactly like this in their Ad Nauseum column. A lot of marketing companies are stealing ideas from old viral videos and art projects.

I wonder if this is due to the age boundary between old farts and digital natives. A young YouTube-aware creative could easily filch ideas knowing there's a good chance that the senior suits who will sign off the campaign will likely never have come across the source.

(In fact, my teenage kids also do this to me all the time, but I read rather more of Reddit than they suspect)

This was on reddit last night - I can't access the article, but the people in the comments on the reddit thread were having massive misconceptions about trademark vs copyright. Also, anyone can put TM next to something - it doesn't mean they trademarked it. It's the (R) that means you actually put forth effort to trademark something.

Google cache mirror: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aroundt...

Let Adecco know how you feel in their contact form too should you feel so inspired (keep it civil though)

https://www.adeccowaytowork.com/en/contact

I just put one through, feels good.

While the site is down, you can watch the author talk about this on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjPP6fgpkTE

You can also go downvote Adecco's ripped off video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpvBfGUeaZs

It's down now. Not because they regret making the video. Oh no, they don't have that sense of regret quite yet. It's down because they can't handle the velocity and fierceness of the negative comments.

At least they are consistently not paying attention to details.

"401 Authorization Required" What is username and password?

the twitter feed on the ripoff homepage is priceless right now :)

Site is down...

Great introduction and images, you worked hard on this! Get any lawyer and kick their billionairism ass five ways to Sunday for $$$treble$$$ psychotic grief damages. Site shows they ruined you.

So an effective cease and and desist letter. Prepare to doubly rebutt these criminal butts' rebuttal:

how-to-write-a-great-response-to-a-cease-and-desist-letter

into: =====>

how-to-write-an-overwhelmingly-terrifying-cease-and-desist-letter:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5907732

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/06/how-to-write-a-great-response...

This comment reads like a Dr. Bronner's soap label.

I never heard of that man or the soap before, and this made my day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Bronner

The label in all its glory: http://all-one-typography.com/

I feel obligated to note that the soap is as great as the label is crazy. As a bonus, you have something entertaining to read if you ever get bored in the shower.

^^^ This! I love the soap, and the label is crazy, so was the man.

Also this: http://magicsoapbox.com/?page_id=12

haha indeed. I've been using it for camping/backpacking for as long as I could remember.

He won't get any damages because he didn't file a trademark application of his own first. All he can do is obstruct the trademark being granted to them instead, then file his own application. The end.

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