http://www.gm.com/copyright/

…and the USPTO agrees:

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=72295402

Also, Thayer is an intellectual property lawyer and an occasional writer on this site, and she actually knows what she’s talking about. Even if that weren’t true, though, I’d still step in here and say that I know this is issue that is close to a lot of people’s hearts, but I’d appreciate it if everyone would keep the discussion focused on ideas. As contentious as some issues have been here, people have done a great job keeping it from getting personal (even in jest) and I’d like that kind of tone to continue to prevail. Thanks.

On the point made here, it actually might be nice if common sense had more to do with law than it does, but a lot of legal things don’t seem (at least on their surface) to make much sense. It might seem absurd that a company gets to prevent other people from using something as basic as a two-letter combination to advertise competing products, but that really is how it works. There are questions about “SL,” particularly regarding when Linden Lab started using it to refer to the Linden Lab product, but in general, a company can definitely trademark a two-letter combination.

Yes I would say the same thing to GM because “GM” is not trademarked. There is a “GM” /LOGO/ – that uses a specific font and “look” – THAT is trademarked.

But the letters G and M placed together outside the purview of that particular ‘look’ – is not trademarked. This is a simple “duh” common sense factor. Go ahead and try it.

Use the currier font and put GM up on a some billboard and see if anyone, including General Motors says anything about it. Thus I repeat: ‘duh’.

So don’t bother trying to spin things to make your statement sound good or sound like it makes any sense at all because common sense will overrule.

Now grow-up and go away.
You are SL (Socially Laughable) ~winks~
Oh but wait. I can’t say that, Linden Research will come sue me, right?

Would you say the same thing to GM? That it’s ludicrous that they could claim a trademark in those two letters, absent any stylization? That a person, hearing those two letters in reference to cars doesn’t know exactly who you’re talking about?

You may be of the opinion that one should not be able to trademark two letters on their own, but as far as I am aware, there is no legal basis for that opinion. Any combination of letters is trademarkable. Heck, even colors, shapes, and sounds are trademarkable.

As for Minsky’s defense, for a term to be generic/descriptive, it has to be used to refer to an entire class of products (e.g., “Kleenex” to refer to all facial tissues). Here, it seems to me that the term “SL” is only used to refer to things related to Second Life. Therefore it still serves to identify the origin of the services, even if it is being used by many different people. It is being used by them to refer to Second Life, not just any virtual world.

Linden lab’s idea that two letters without any kind of special dressing (shape, font, colors, etc.) can be claimed as copyright or anything legally belonging to them in any way is laughable and ludicrous.

I am actually hopeful it DOES go to court and that the court sees the bullshit Linden Lab is shoveling for what it is: bullshit. They are not claiming some kind of SL logo is their trade mark. They are actually claiming the LETTERS “S” followed immediately by “L” in any way, shape or form in context with any kind of virtual world, MMORPG or other ‘game’ is theirs.

Pah-leeze.

Minsky: You need to also file a complaint against the Linden lab application for the trademark “SL” – which is up for rebuttal right now. I don’t know how to do it. But you already have this ball rolling – help all of us who agree with you – do it.

I knew there had to be some legal type detrademarking deregistration thing people could file.

I’m just curious, if, somehow, all SLers were just to use the term SL-ART or SL|ART or SLART2 or anything just a tiny bit modified with a dash or a slash, would that completely remove all problems?

My answer is NO, Minsky wouldn’t let it rest anyway…. that’s why to me Minsky is in it for the money, and SL and LL are in it to use a 5 letter word to mean SL art.

I think the court will see this… and LL is going to find a way to detrademark slart.

The cool thing is, if this case goes to court, and LL wins, then the word “slart” may be added to the dictionary.