Baran is demonstrating a gross misunderstanding of the distinction between copyright and trademark law with the following suggestion. You download or share music that you don’t have a rights for, well that’s copyright law… take someone else’s trademark and use it as your own, that’s trademark law.

At this point the “web 2.0″ label could be argued to be in the public domain given how often it is used and the fact that, to my knowledge, the trademark that O’Reilly owns has not been enforced, Tim has pretty much let it fall into the public. Having said that, O’Reilly has invested in and built equity in his Web 2.0 Conference and Web 2.0 Summit, so I wouldn’t expect him to give a pass to Baran.

At any rate, I just find it confusing and would prefer that WebGuild not attempt to use deception as a sales tactic.

“I also spoke to Baran on the phone. He said that his conference names are descriptive of the content and perfectly valid. Any legal attempts by O’Reilly or Carson to stop him from using the names, he said, would be comparable to the RIAA suing people for copying music. In short, he was unapologetic, and he also claimed that he was unaware that O’Reilly tried to contact him.”

[From WebGuild Using Questionable Tactics To Promote Events]