Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A new brand logo for Second Life®

Don't panic yet, but Linden Lab has a new brand logo to promote your involvement in the Second Life world with the inSL logo.
It seems a bit confusing and complicated, but it should not be. The new logo is to help outsiders understand that you are working inworld with a product or business. But what is more, with the logo you have guidelines, what you can do and what you can not.
It is not my intention to write about every possibility, but there are some you may find interesting. And I am wondering how some blogs will change their names, or stop their activities after reading all the guidelines referring to the trademarks.

The good news comes first of course when to use the logo: you can use the logo when you have marketing services in SL, you teach an architecture course, your profile page on your social networking page shows your name, you've released on cd an album of your piano performances inworld, you publish a blog about scripting in the Second Life environment. These are some examples given by Linden Lab.
Do read the guidelines though, to know when to use the new logo properly.

But when going through all the terms and guidelines I also found this:
Unauthorized uses of Linden Lab's Trademarks
under the paragraph "No use in Second-Level Domain names" there is a list of examples which are not allowed.

"This is NOT OK:
secondlife.net
secondlife.de
2ndlife.com
secondlife-grid.com
chinasecondlife.com
secondlifesoftware.com
secondlifetutorials.com
lindenworld.com"

and further under "No Adaptation or Registration", which explains never to modify, imitate, or register any Linden Lab trademark, including but not limited to the Second Life brand name, the Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo, and the tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.", including a list:

"This is NOT OK:
2nd Life (can't shorten "Second Life")
2Life (no "Second Life" abbreviations)
Second-Life (can't hyphenate "Second Life")
Segunda Vida (no Spanish equivalent of "Second Life")
Zweites Leben (can't make a German equivalent)
第二生命 (no Chinese equivalent)
第二の人生 (no Japanese equivalent)
Your World. Your Voice. (can't imitate our tagline "Your World. Your Imagination.")"


I know and understand that there have to be rules and guidelines, but I wonder how the names that already exists for quiet some time, should change and how they will communicate this .
Also we, bloggers, will have to be prudent how to use the names and logos.
Although we only report about that virtual world, I don't see why we can not use the names and logos if it is justified.
I will now write about my third life, and I am glad that my name is Looker Lumet and not LL, or would that be a problem too?;)

Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

For one side i understand Linden Labs®'s need to protect their trademarks, but the problem now is they had to do that before and now some people may have problems becuase the use of the name in URL or page names (now i remember one page called SLsucks).

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is that the Trade Mark "Secondlife" in Portugal is already registered by an individual from the South way before Linden Lab was formed.
Does LL have an international registration of their brands/trademarks in all countries in the world?

This will cause a lot of disturbance in so many people.

I believe they didn't understand how this can affect residents and make them back away from Second Life.

We will see what happen...

Looker Lumet said...

Well, it has always been like that, Raul, they have always decided things after they allowed it.....examples are too many to list....

yes, Winter, that is why I wrote this article, I am also wondering what all the rules and guidelines will do to us, the residents, how it will affect those who have always been under a certain name with a blog..... At the end it will be no fun anymore to be on the grid, just for those who has some kind of a business, but if there are no residents, how will their business grow??
Just another thing to watch out for...;)