O’Reilly trademarks “Web 2.0″ and sets lawyers on IT@Cork!

Posted on May 26, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized |

Well this pretty much sucks… link via Om

O’Reilly trademarks “Web 2.0″ and sets lawyers on IT@Cork! » at Tom Raftery’s I.T. views:

Basically O’Reilly are claiming to have applied for a trademark for the term “Web 2.0″ and therefore IT@Cork can’t use the term for its conference. Apparantly use of the term “Web 2.0″ is a “flagrant violation” of their trademark rights!

UPDATE: O’Reilly responds and IMHO it still sucks… imagine how we would all feel (O’Reilly included) if someone trademarked “Web” or “Internet”. At one point does a term enter the public domain?

UPDATE2: “Web 2.0 is about a business that works“… too bad that Battelle doesn’t see the irony of the company that is supposedly the vanguard of Web 2.0 doing something that they themselves look down on anyone else doing, sending a cease-and-desist that smacks of pre-web 1.0 business tactics. What happened to all that loosely coupled kumbayah that is always dripping from web 2.0 proponents?

UPDATE3: Tim O’Reilly posted a thoughtful response on the entire issue. The issue is complex and points to one of the challenges in patent and trademark law today, which I loosely referenced in my first update to this post. Having said all that, the mob mentality that some corners of the blogosphere displayed was beyond defense… there’s no excuse for personal attacks on any issue in our business.

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