Has Twitter been XEROXed?
January 20th, 2009 by Jerell | Filed under Twitter.As many of you know the term Xerox has been used (despite efforts from the company) as a verb for some time now. Basically meaning that Xerox is used as a generic word meaning to copy, and this has created difficulties for the company to enforce its registered Trademark. For example, “I need to go Xerox a presentation so that everyone has a paper copy of it for the meeting”. But is Twitter now in danger of becoming a generic term for communication and entering the same situation of having its term Xeroxed as well?
When you go to the USPTO website and search the Trademarks for the term Twitter, you get the following results noting that Twitter or Twitter.com are not a Registered Trademarks.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=e70rp.4.1
But you also learn that besides the term not being registered, it is currently in a Notice of allowance stage.
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77166246
But this seems rather odd, as when I look at my own registered Trademark, SALUS® you can see the steps that we had to go through, and how we progressed through time. In contrast you also notice the time lag that Twitter is going through. Why? I fully admit that I need an IP lawyer to completely explain what is going on here, but I have my speculation.
Ok so here is where it even gets more weird, nowhere on the Twitter website can you find a TM or a TM for the term Twitter. Nothing, Nada, Zilch. I’ve looked on every page, and I cant find it. IF you know where it is, please tell me. The closest I come to finding is a Copyright “© 2009 Twitter” notice that is on every page, but no TM anywhere.
So my next question was, how many websites currently have the term ‘twitter’ in their name. Right off the bat I know of two that I own, TwitterTRUTH.com which your reading, and TwitterSEO.com which I have redirecting to my Body Care Company as I try and figure out what to do with the site. Enough digressing.
THE NUMBERS
Currently according to http://domain-search.domaintools.com there are over 3,388 registered sites that use Twitter as part of its Domain Name. Wow! (thanks to @NewRulez for showing me this site and @andreweldon others for their suggestions)
This can even be broken down to show 2,757 use Twitter as part of its first name
My site www.twitterTRUTH.com is an example of this
…and 866 registered sites use twitter at the end of the registered domain
and a random example of this is http://www.learningtwitter.com/
So what do you think?
Has Twitter been XEROXed?
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Or does it mean that they are letting others help them to spread the good word of twittering? It seems like such an obvious fundamental error, so fundamental (and perhaps purposeful?) it is almost like Muhammed Ali hitting George Foreman with ’schoolboy error’ straight right as the first punch of the match.
Either that, or twitter thinks their logo just looks so much cooler without any ‘TM’ next to it, decreasing their street cred? Looking at their privacy policy it seems like they have consulted a lawyer at some point (although their terms of service is dubiously ‘inspired’ by flickr.)
Twitter rocks… regardless
I’m wondering if it matters. In fact, I think the fact that the term is available in common use works in favor of Twitter. Widespread usage of the term as you described in the thousand of sites registered serve as billboards for the mothership site of twitter.com. The majority, if not all of these sites, derive their value from the existence of the Twitter.com service and not the other way around. Each site in turn establishes the Twitter.com property with that much more authority as from it all good (Twitter) things flow. I think not trademarking or trying to restrict the use of the term is a brilliant example of viral marketing. Interesting comparison … Plurk, another leading microblog service, has attracted only 229 active domains incorporating its name vs. Twitter’s 1909. Plurk has a page rank of 6/10 vs. Twitter’s 8/10. Plurk doesn’t appear to TM its name either. Plurk probably wants to be Twitter (or as popular as) when it grows up.
Very good observations! I actually thought of the same thing too when I saw so many sites with Twitter~ in front. But all sites were smart to say they are not affiliated to Twitter in any way.
Twitter has up to 6 months (from date of Notice of Allowance NOA that is in August 2008) to file either a Statement of Use of the word TWITTER in its “business application” and website.
That is why USPTO.gov isn’t taking any action since Aug 19th 2008.
This is only my guess though! What do you think?
I have also noticed that although you can register a domain name with the word “twitter” in it, you CANNOT create an actual twitter account with the name “twitter” in it.
Wasn’t the same question raised about Blogger, also founded by Ev? Is this part of his strategy: get the name out there as many times as possible so it becomes commonplace?
Really interesting observation Jerrell. It’s also interesting to note, that even if a company does have their name trademarked, they can lose their legal control of that name. Here’s how - legal precedence says that if you own a trademarked name, but do not make reasonable efforts to enforce the limited use of that name, that you can lose your right to control that name. I.e., if hundreds of websites start using “Salus” in their name and you do not make a reasonable effort to stop them or give permission to each of them to use it, your name can reach a level of common use that you have allowed, and therefor, the courts say, you have given away your rights. The term “Realtor” is a trademarked name of the National Association of Realtors. And, even though you may be a licenced real estate salesperson, you do not have the right to call yourself a “Realtor” unless you’re a dues paying member of the NAR. Back when I was a Realtor, I registered a website with the name Realtor in it and promptly received an email from the NAR telling me that I can not use their trademarked term in any website name without their explicit permission.
By the way, how many hits to you think http://Twiter.com gets? Notice I didn’t write Twitter, but Twiter…..a misspelling. This site has a Google Page Rank of 4, and almost 2,000 incoming links. I looked at the first page of incoming links and they’re all from legitimate sites who meant to link to Twitter. One is from Techcruch! The site has 189 references from Wikipedia pages and an Alexa ranking of 171,043 (only 171,042 websites in the world rank higher for traffic than this site, says Alexa).