Retraction from Tumblr
istumblrdown.com
istumblrdown.com
Perceivedly, it happens a lot that big scary companies bully smaller entities with meritless but expensive-to-fight legal threats. That sometimes there's enough of a public notice of that to make the company reconsider and to limit the damage done is just part of the game and doesn't really leave them without blame, it just means they got "caught" this time.
Instead of bashing Tumblr for apologizing, we should be happy they retracted. If HN was the reason why they retracted, then great. But let's stop looking down on Tumblr purring ourselves at the top.
We are all at the same boat and same level. We are all trying to make our companies work.
The thing to note in all this is:
"Our legal department very recently started using a third party vendor to assist us in pursuing trademark infringers and, due to an error in our new process, your domain was mistakenly caught in the cross-fire."
If tumblr has switched to yahoo! legal, that is not a nice side effect of the acquisition.
Of course it's not for me to accept or not accept that apology and no one should care about my opinion on the matter. But I think not appreciating the apology is a defensible position to take and I'm trying to articulate why I feel so. Feel free to dismiss me. :)
However, I don't believe that most companies would just handle problems like this in a case by case basis. IsTumblrDown made some noise, and that noise led Tumblr to recognizing a flaw in their process. At the very least, it'll make them more cautious going forward. Incidents like this can lead to long-term improvements.
It means that legal departments have to stop the "shoot first ask questions later" strategy
It's very easy to just go around threatening legal action against people unchecked.
HN can be one scary angry mob which is nice to be backed by, but horrible to be on the end of. Remember the Aria Richards debacle which was heightened by this community. Just one of many. (That wasn't my intention by the way and everyone's been pretty calm.)
The HN effect is a strange one. :)
To use the indelicate phrasing of my first manager, bay area tech is highly incestuous.
It might matter to Tumblr if HNers boycott Tumblr the employer or Tumblr the business partner.
There ought to be some comeback on people who do this, just like there ought to be for people who send out false DMCA takedown notices.
Good thing I'm not cynical.
I was just at dinner with an ex-Zynga game dev last night who had never even heard of it.
Well, he did say "top talent"!
This friend of mine was laid off in New York and received his severance; based on what I know about him, he could work in a multitude of places right now if he wanted to.
Zynga's vilified image aside, there is no reason to believe their engineers are not "top talent."
Wait, what? He gets to keep his product but post-pones its availability by a "few weeks"? Opportunity missed. Or am I missing something?
That's the part they should be apologizing for.
Unless their business is actually getting hurt in any way (is someone selling fake Chinese made Tumblr t-shirts on the black market?), this is just a systematic exercise in corporate bullying.
They shouldn't be engaged in this in the first place. Tumblr is not friggin' Nike.
Disclaimer: IANAL
I wouldn't be surprised. Tumblr just sold for a billion dollars, remember? That's certainly a brand worth protecting.
Sorry for the off topic.
A small disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying:
Tumblr(R) is a registered trademark of Tumblr, Inc. which is not affiliated with this site. All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners.
goes a long ways towards avoiding problems like this.
If you had to make sure that no one uses your trademark to talk about you, wouldn't that lead to a very strange place?
Even if you, personally are asking the question in a reasonable context where the answer is probably "yes", just saying it gets you bucketed into the "toxic people who must be contained or avoided" bucket in a lot of otherwise reasonable people's minds. Unless you are actually employed as a lawyer, it would probably be a good career move to strike discussions of legal risk from your vocabulary.
ps: Yes, I know you were asking more about what Tumblr needs to do to keep the right to stop others from using their trademark, but nobody read past "legal problems"
This is America. We're here to make money, and to win. That means operating in a legal system that can work for us or against us depending on the law. If a startup is too immature to see my question as anything other than a straightforward request for information, then I wouldn't want to work for them anyway.
I wouldn't see a reason for annoyance. It seems you asked a question, and you got answers. I'd declare success.
HN users do not overlap (a lot) with the target audience for Tumblr. (not a lot at least)
HN is of course an important news outlet in the industry.
I think any company can win market, if your local it friend/guy starts recommending you specific brand. For example, I changed 10 peoples mind how to think about AV. They went over from AVG to MSE, because I recommended. Why? Because, there is less chance for them to fuck it up and install trial.