
Zendesk and the Art of Trademark Trolling - beNjiox
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/zendesk-and-art-trademark-trolling
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mcbits
Wait, this sounds like Zendesk is an independent company. Isn't it a
subsidiary of Autodesk? Now I'm confused...

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josephcooney
Well played, sir/ma'am. You make an excellent point.

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walrus01
This is a fine reason to use OSTicket or Request Tracker, both of which are
free, open source and (with their various dependencies and modules) composed
of entirely GPL, BSD and Apache licensed software.

Disregard Zendesk, acquire RT.

RT has been around for 15 years but it's continually developed and kept up to
date. It's used by a large percentage of the 50 largest ISPs in the world for
their back-end OSS/NOC ticketing.

Wait until they go after everything that's pronounced verbally like Zen. Most
people I know if speaking about the Xen hypervisor will say "zen", not
pronounce it as if it were a Chinese family name (Chen or how the X in
Xiaoming is pronounced).

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Artemis2
Quick question, what would be a good alternative to Zendesk? We've initially
chosen it because it seemed pretty standard, but it looks designed for much
larger companies. We avoid using it (!) because the UI is confusing, and it's
very pricey for what it does (especially that some basic features are locked
in the higher-priced tiers). This article doesn't help either.

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tzaman
Intercom, hands down. We switched what now seems a long time ago, and the
pricing is like 3x of what we paid for Zendesk, but the UX feels so much more
natural and UI unobstructive that we gladly pay $600/mo for it. Plus the
additional features make it a non brainer (true, it also lacks some that
Zendesk has)

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haikuginger
We used Intercom for a while and found it didn't fit our use-case; our tickets
tend to be longer and more technically in-depth, and the Intercom UI/API
didn't perform very well in those constraints.

Additionally, the chat-based interface gave our customers the expectation that
they'd always get an immediate response, which just wasn't always possible.

We still have it and use it for some features like usage analytics, but it's
not our primary support tool.

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tyre
When I was at ZenPayroll we received a notice early on (2013) from ZenDesk
about name conflict.

The rebrand which ended up as Gusto was, in part, caused by this.

To be fair to ZenDesk, we had a similar target market and did get questions
about whether we were the same company.

To be fair to ZenPayroll, they pivoted mid-YC from a company called
Switchboard Labs so didn't put a lot of long-term thought into the name.

Naming things is hard, but at least establish your own name-space.

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sschueller
Well, I thought about using zendesk but now I'm taking my business somewhere
else and I hope others also think twice before giving their business to
companies using such tactics.

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markdown
LOL it's about "Zen" now?

Half a decade ago they were claiming ownership of "desk".

2011 HN discussion of their tiff with freshdesk.com:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311496)

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williamstein
Zendesk recently sent their customers (at least me) a survey asking about
thoughts regarding changing their own name from zendesk to something else.

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govindpatel
What is wrong in using the word 'zen'? It is not like you name your child
'zen' and other people shouldn't name their child 'zen'.

I think zendesk fears that if people use the word 'zen' and they are better
then them, they will lose customers. If you want your brand to remain unique,
just try to be better than all others. There is nothing to fear, If you are
better, people will use your product else they will use some other.

BTW there are many alternative for zendesk and which are doing better than
zendesk. I believe Freshdesk([https://freshdesk.com](https://freshdesk.com))
is doing better than zendesk. So may be that is why zendesk fears.

Also they always exchanged words with freshdesk. Even markdown has commented
about
that:([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750875))

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pbhjpbhj
Surely the alleged infringers just need to appear at a trial in order for
Autodesk to be laughed out of court with an award of costs against them?

Shouldn't there be some sort of government action against these sorts of
bullying crimes, removal of trademarks for false allegations of infringement
would be a good start to rationalising business uses of IP laws.

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enra
I'm not sure if this is the case, but I remember reading somewhere than in
order to keep your trademark, you have to show that you defend it (ie. bully
other companies with the same name).

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jessaustin
TFA "may increase the chance of confusion" between Zendesk and other assholes
like Kik.

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minimaxir
The Kik case was different. In that case, Kik was a) a word which had no other
usage outside the startup that it represents it/no historical prior use, and
b) the existing npm package held by another developer was an _exact_ name
match.

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greglindahl
kik.com in 1998:
[https://web.archive.org/web/19980115104316/http://kik.com](https://web.archive.org/web/19980115104316/http://kik.com)

List of KIK used as a TLA:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kik)

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vskarine
is that why ZenPayroll re-branded to Gusto?

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skylan_q
Reminds me of Intel suing Yoga studio for being named "Yoga Inside"
(infringing on Intel's "Intel inside" campaign slogan)

[http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Intel-forces-yoga-
gro...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Intel-forces-yoga-group-to-
fight-for-its-name-2859147.php)

