
How SEOMoz sent us a takedown notice. - picsoung
http://rudebaguette.com/2013/05/31/why-trademarks-are-important-for-startups-how-seomoz-sent-us-a-takedown-notice/
======
mindcrime
Wow, Moz does _not_ come out looking good here. Doz and Moz are not the same
word, don't mean the same thing (I'm not even sure either word actually means
_anything_ ) and are only similar in the most superficial possible way.

Moz should quit fvcking around with lawyers and filings and trademarks and
whatever legal bullshit and just focus on innovating and being better at what
they do.

~~~
eridius
They actually are quite similar words, for companies which it seems are
engaged in the exact same business.

I can easily imagine how someone, not familiar with either company, might hear
of Moz and, later, mistakenly believe that the company they heard about was
Doz (or vice versa).

Don't forget, trademark law is such that you have to protect your trademark or
you lose it. If there's any risk at all of infringement, you have to go after
it. So although the case that Moz and Doz are similar isn't particularly
strong, it seems close enough that I'm not surprised Moz is taking this
action.

~~~
gscott
<http://web.archive.org/web/20121207022623/http://moz.com/>

While SeoMoz was promoting Marketing Analytics on this domain name there was
nothing about moving all of their services to it. It seems to me that Doz has
a reasonable chance (25% maybe) against the giant Moz. I would fight it! There
is no way the DOZ guy could predict a domain name shift for Seomoz.com. I
visit Woz.com occasionally to see what Woz is up to. I rarely search DMoz.com
anymore. I would fight the Moz trademark if there is one... it is too common.

Is moz a person (Woz), a Browser?, a Metal Laminates and Architectural
Products company, do they sell MOZ Luxury Wheels?, a songwriter?
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Moz>,
finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MOZ.TO, do they sell sweaters? viva-moz.com, is it a
cafe? moz-cafe, another person Middelton-Moz Institute?, does it have to do
with orphans? projectmoz.com. That is just 2 pages on Google.

~~~
eridius
According to another comment (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800161>),
Sarah Bird notified Doz of the issue way back in January. So yes I think Doz
could indeed predict that SEOmoz was going to become Moz.

~~~
gscott
In January their website still had "Marketing Analytics" as the featured item
that was coming soon. The poor Doz guy still had no idea what was going on and
thought it was different enough. Her warning wasn't very specific and he
thought he was in good shape. This is really a bait and switch on him.

<http://web.archive.org/web/20130122024159/http://moz.com/>

~~~
eridius
How is this bait and switch? The COO of SEOmoz told them that they were going
to have a conflict. Now they have a conflict. It seems like it's exactly what
was advertised on the packaging.

------
MartinCron
There's a particular irony that the Moz folks think that the Doz name is too
similar to be allowed, when they're using an abbreviation for Mozilla that has
been around for years and years.

~~~
qeorge
Its intentional too. Rand specifically choose the name SEOMoz to benefit from
the brand confusion.

From the horse's mouth (Mixergy interview):

 _"Andrew: What does SEOmoz mean?_

 _Rand: When we started up, we were looking for a name that was short. That
had the word SEO in there so that people would know what the blog was about.
And, I was a big fan of the Mozilla Foundation, with DMoz and ChefMoz. What
was the other ones that they were doing at the time? There was, like, MapMoz,
there was a bunch of them at the time that were coming out. That were based
around this open source, weird transparent._

[...]

 _So, that was SEOmoz, was taking SEO and combining it with the moz ethos.
There you go."_

Source: <http://mixergy.com/seomoz-rand-fishkin-interview/>

~~~
lingben
Not only that but just recently them moved from SEOmoz which is arguably more
different from Mozilla to MOZ which is just a shortened form of Mozilla

~~~
masklinn
And has been used as such by mozilla for years: it's their official vendor
prefix for CSS properties their official vendor prefix for non-standard
javascript APIs (either draft standards or proprietary extensions, such as
Firefox OS APIs):

* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/M...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Mozilla_Extensions?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Web%2FCSS%2FCSS_Reference%2FMozilla_Extensions)

* <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MozActivity>

* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mo...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/document.mozFullScreen)

* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requ...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/window.requestAnimationFrame?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Web%2FAPI%2Fwindow.mozRequestAnimationFrame)

------
akg_67
Very interesting. If Moz and (D)oz are close, how about Moz and Moz(illa)?
Lets start out as SEOmoz and when we become big enough, we can change our name
to Moz so that Mozilla doesn't come after us when we are small. As SEOMoz has
changed the name to Moz, may be Doz want to rename to SEODoz. What a racket!

~~~
cpeterso
What did the "moz" in SEOmoz originally mean? It was a strange choice to begin
with.

~~~
masklinn
It's Mozilla's "moz". Quite literally: <http://moz.com/blog/what-does-the-moz-
in-seomoz-mean>

(the "moz" in DMOZ comes from mozilla through its original domain:
Directory.MOZilla.org)

------
nathas
A very important snippet from the comments from Sarah Bird (COO of Moz)

> So, I did what I would want someone to do for me. In January, I called him
> to give him a personal heads up that we had a problem, that the brand felt
> too close for us. I told him we had a registered intent-to-use, and that we
> were planning on launching soon, just like him. I asked him to use a
> different brand for his future product or that we would have to cancel his
> mark. He explained to me that his product is different enough from ours that
> there wouldn’t be confusion. I urged him to talk to his lawyer and get
> independent advice before he launched his product.

~~~
pseudonym
That actually makes me more disinclined to use Moz-- this isn't a snap-retort
by an overeager in-house lawyer looking to earn their fee, this is the COO
claiming that "Doz" is a trademark violation because it ends on "oz". It's
flat-out depressing, and giving overt hints about "Change your name or we'll
sue" ahead of time doesn't make this any better.

~~~
nathas
I just feel that shifts from a "we're going to legally bully you" to "cmon, we
let you know".

If someone were to get a notice saying, "Hey, we're going to drop a bomb on
you in 3 months. You might want to leave." and continues to live there
stubbornly, then complains a bomb got dropped on them, whose fault is it?
Clearly it doesn't mean you didn't get a bomb dropped on you, but it kind of
nullifies your right to complain about it.

~~~
pseudonym
There's a difference between "fault" and "blame" that's not easily expressed
in the english language, but I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on your
analogy. If someone is going to do something of questionable legality and
warns you about it beforehand, does that make it "more legal"? I'll bet you
think that people in high-crime areas should "just move out if they don't want
to get mugged", too. But here, I have an analogy too:

I decide, say in January, that I want to change my company name from "Foobaz"
to "Baz". Over the next 6 months, I go out to a bunch of startups named "Caz",
"Faz", and "Jaz", and say "Hey so you might want to change your name because
I'm going to change my company's name to Baz and I'm totally going to drop a
legal hammer on you if you don't because I can afford it and you can't". After
those 6 months are up, I change my name, and then flip around and start suing
because they "didn't take my warning".

The logic here is questionable at best.

------
andrewdumont
Pulling over my comments on the matter from Inbound.org. Anji mentions a
partnership in his post that I wanted to put come context behind.

> When Anji reached out to us initially, they were CapSEO. At the time, I had
> no idea Doz existed, or that CapSEO was rebranding. As Anji and I talked,
> the discussion was around the functionality of CapSEO, which I saw as
> complementary. Later the discussion moved to their plans to rebrand to Doz,
> with a fuller focus on inbound marketing services (and software). This too
> is complementary, but not with the brand of Doz, as Sarah alluded to.
> There's obvious confusion and brand dilution of Moz that can come as a
> result, and it's our duty to protect our trademark.

I think it's important to have this context. It feel into our lap with no
other option than the action we took, we didn't seek this out. We've taken
every step to be transparent into why, and hope, still, that we can resolve
this in a civilized manner. I've spent the past 8 years of my life doing
startups, the last thing we want to do is derail a startup from their mission.

~~~
examancer
I love the outpouring of empathy in the language of responses from Moz. Too
bad at the end the end you still decide to stick to your guns and assert there
is "obvious confusion and brand dilution". Really?!?

Are you really supporting the idea that potential customers of Moz, who go out
in search of Moz and stumble on Doz, would confuse the two? Sure, they share
two out of three letters, but they don't sound the same (no risk of a
misspelling leading to Doz) or look the same.

It doesn't appear at all the that Doz is trying to conflate their brand to
cause confusion or imply a relationship.

My guess is a company like Doz doesn't have the resources to fight, but they
should. I can't imagine a court agreeing that even a "moron in a hurry" would
confuse the two.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry>

~~~
aetimmes
>Are you really supporting the idea that potential customers of Moz, who go
out in search of Moz and stumble on Doz, would confuse the two?

With a Hamming distance of one between the names, why wouldn't this be
plausible?

~~~
rhizome
I don't know the statistical term for it, but the letters are on opposite
sides of a QWERTY keyboard.

~~~
eridius
Which would matter if we were talking about likelihood of typos, but we're
not.

~~~
rhizome
Typosquatting has a larger legal footprint in copyright cases than Hamming
distance, of which I can find no references. I'm not saying that typosquatting
is happening here, but I would guess that typosquatting decisions would come
to bear here well before HD did.

------
gklitt
I find myself playing devil's advocate against all the hate being slung at
SEOMoz in these comments. Coming at this dispute from an impartial viewpoint
(never heard of either of these companies before this story), it sounds like
it could potentially be a valid case of trademark protection. The two
companies sound like they're in a similar industry, and the names are
undeniably similar.

I'm not that familiar with the specifics of trademark law, so I don't know
what the legally appropriate outcome is. But after seeing some of the comments
from SEOMoz employees, I would be interested in reading a full response post
explaining their side of the story.

~~~
macspoofing
The reality is that Moz does seem to have a case. Both companies are in the
same industry, probably targeting the same clients. At the very least, it is a
grey area.

~~~
notatoad
If anything, Doz has a case against Moz. Up until a couple of days ago, Moz
wasn't Moz, they were SEOMoz, which is really very different from Doz. now
they've changed their name and they're sending C&D letters to existing
companies who have similar names to what they changed to? If they didn't want
to be confused with Doz, they shouldn't have changed their name to Moz.

------
Kiro
I will cancel our SEOmoz account tomorrow.

~~~
chopsueyar
Will you sign up with doz.com?

~~~
MrBlue
YUP!

------
programminggeek
Here's my favorite part, moz was originally probably used because SEO's
favorite directory was/is the open directory project or just "dmoz" as it is
known to SEO's. And, in the early days, a great SEO strategy was to volunteer
to manage/moderate a category, so that it would be easier to get your own or
clients' sites approved.

I'm not sure if Rand was one of those SEO people playing that game, but it's
ironic that "moz" came from an open directory and is now fighting about
trademarks.

What's next? Patent trolling? ;)

~~~
dohertyjf
Here's a post that Rand wrote about the origin of Moz in SEOmoz -
<http://moz.com/blog/what-does-the-moz-in-seomoz-mean>

_EDIT_ tl;DR based off the [moz] that was so popular years ago that stood for
openness and transparency. DMOZ and others are included in this history.

~~~
masklinn
> tl;DR not based off DMOZ

Uh?

> We're building off the history of organizations like DMOZ, Mozilla, Chefmoz,
> etc

~~~
dohertyjf
Building off the history of, yes. The history of openness and transparency,
not becoming an admin on DMOZ for the sake of a link from one of the strongest
domains on the Internet.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
but... but... your TL;DR said "Not based off DMOZ" when the actual text does,
in fact, say "building off the history of organizations like DMOZ". So, at a
minimum, your TL;DR misleads people who didn't read it.

~~~
dohertyjf
Fair point. Updated comment.

------
nhebb
I know that HN has ring detection for up votes, but how about down votes? As
of this writing, this post is only 1 hr old and has 98 points (which is higher
than many of the posts currently above it) and 105 comments. yet it's dropping
fast. It's a bit suspicious.

------
a5seo
I don't understand why they didn't just offer him $50K to rebrand. That would
be both GENEROUS and EMPATHETIC.

<http://moz.com/about/tagfee#generous>
<http://moz.com/about/tagfee#empathetic>

Maybe it should be TAGFEEH +Hypocritical.

------
benatkin
I don't think there's a conflict at all, and I hope the trademark office
and/or the courts get it right. If you want to protect against indirect
competitors rhyming with you, please pick a name that's longer than one
syllable.

~~~
Ryan_Watson
In trademark law, a mark can be "Confusingly Similar." Doz differs from Moz,
but it may still infringe on Moz's trademark. Because Doz has a similar
spelling and operates in the same industry as Moz, it may lead a "reasonable
person" to believe the trademarks are related. The court will hold that Doz
infringed on Moz's trademark if a reasonable person would find the two
confusingly similar.

~~~
Ryan_Watson
Doz and Moz operate in the same industry and the use of Doz would most
certainly trip the reasonable person standard for confusing similarity. If
"Doz's" attorney had performed a 30 min trademark search with the USPTO "Doz"
would have been advised to choose a different name.

~~~
benatkin
> If "Doz's" attorney had performed a 30 min trademark search with the USPTO
> "Doz" would have been advised to choose a different name.

I don't believe you, and you haven't provided anything to back up your
statement.

------
coldcode
Check out all the variations on <http://?oz.com>. Will you sue all of them for
confusion? 3 letter word trademark arguments are pretty lame.

Actually some of the ?oz.com sites are pretty bizarre.

~~~
jennita
It's not _just_ the name. Doz in and of itself has no meaning similar to Moz.
The issue is the combination of name + tool focus.

~~~
dohertyjf
Jen you might want to disclose that you work for Moz :-)

Full disclosure: I'm Jen's friend.

~~~
jennita
Hah sorry about that. I've been open in this thread that I work there, should
have mentioned it again. :)

------
Timothee
_"Even if it is a meritless suit like this one"_

This statement lacks arguments supporting it.

DOZ is "Search and Social Media Marketing done by professionals" according to
their website, and Moz is "Software and Community for better Marketing". IANAL
but I feel like there could indeed be confusion between the two, especially
considering DOZ was Cap _SEO_ before, and Moz, _SEO_ Moz.

So now it's a matter of trademarks and specifically timeline on who was first,
but the details are not provided in the post.

------
pron
They should compromise and get it over with: If SEOmoz think the Doz brand is
truly a problem for them, they should pay Doz a fair sum to abandon their
trademark.

------
sergiotapia
God damn lawyers with their god damn copyright crap. Eh, you get what I mean.

I'm disgusted by this behavior. What happened to innovate?

~~~
examancer
It's a trademark issue, but I agree petty IP issues are far too often standing
in the way of innovation.

------
MichelleRobbins
First use (actual use, not intent to use) in commerce matters. A lot. And it
seems like Doz has that. Also, they already own their mark (they did register
it, seems there's confusion on that in this thread too). I know a guy that
deals in this kind of thing literally every day - and after reviewing the
marks and filings at uspto he says it's a pretty long shot that Moz will get
the Doz mark removed. (actually he said "no way will Doz lose their mark") So
unless those first use facts aren't actual facts....well I reckon we'll all
wait and see how this plays out.

Someone somewhere in this thread asked for an example of a similar situation.
I can personally speak to that. Long ago and far away I worked at a software
company and we developed a web based traffic analytics platform - pre
webtrends even! Anyhoo we didn't register the mark for it (young!) and we were
contacted by someone who was trying to get their mark (same exact product
name, similar functionality - a web traffic analytics program) registered.
They told us we had to stop using the name, blah blah blah because they owned
the trademark. Well, they actually didn't - yet. And we had first use in
commerce. So we opposed their application, it was denied, we filed ours (which
they of course opposed), but we ultimately owned the mark. Solely because of
first use in commerce.

I don't know every detail of this unfortunate scenario, but from what I've
read here and on the blog post, it's not at all a slam dunk for Moz. And it's
unfortunate that they, and the Doz folks are having to spend time, energy and
money on this.

------
scrozier
I'm all for the little guy, and I know this must suck for CapSEO/Doz. But
SEOmoz seems to me to have acted above board here. I think Doz erred, and
suggest they rebrand and move on.

~~~
unreal37
I don't think Doz erred. They went out, probably paid 5 digits for the doz.com
domain name months ago, but didn't register it as a trademark. And then seomoz
goes and rebrands last week and they are caught off guard.

If moz wants the doz.com domain, they should pay for it. Why should doz just
give it up over such a weak claim?

------
rajahafify
Its funny to see Moz employee defending their company. This is HN. Most people
here is highly opinionated and most has made up their mind. Nothing you say
can ever justify what your company did.

Just do what Opera did and take back your lawyer letter. Don't make this mess
any bigger and you'd do fine. If you want, you can prove that Moz can do SEO
better than Doz.

SEO is irrelevant these days though. Product is what matters

~~~
andrewdumont
I want people to understand the why, that's why I'm here. My goal isn't to
convince people to change their mind. The truth of the matter is that we were
put into a difficult position, and with the information we had, this was what
we viewed as our only course of action.

~~~
lingben
this is a straw-man argument, no one 'forced' you to do anything, a decision
was made and it was the wrong one

now you have two choices, double down or retract and learn from the mistake

~~~
faaaah
Seems you are the one with the straw man, since he didn't say anyone forced
them to do something.

~~~
lingben
"we viewed as our only course of action"

~~~
faaaah
That sentence does not mean that anyone forced them to do anything.

------
jot
Disclaimer: I once paid for three months of SEOMoz

How different would this thread be if it were Google, Microsoft, Salesforce or
some billion dollar company that decided to launch an Internet marketing brand
at Doz.com?

SEOMoz's openness has helped dozens of startups with posts like this:
[http://moz.com/blog/mozs-18-million-venture-financing-our-
st...](http://moz.com/blog/mozs-18-million-venture-financing-our-story-
metrics-and-future) You can't get much nicer than that to your competitors
short of giving them money. IIRC the deck included there, from over a year
ago, hints at future use of the Moz brand too.

Just because they're bigger than the company behind Doz.com doesn't mean we
have to jump to the conclusion that they are the bad guys here. Their lawyer
even went to the unnecessary trouble of offering to help doz.com which might
have meant financially given a more dignified response.

------
carlsednaoui
Moz employees, it would be useful if you mentioned that you're associated with
Moz when commenting on this thread.

------
Sujan
Slightly off topic, but does it feel 'fishy' and 'unfair' to anyone else that
this was published 2 days after the rebranding was announced?

~~~
djim
i don't think this is off-topic. this was this first thing that popped into my
mind as i read this article. Moz is in the wrong here, legal or not.

~~~
Sujan
Huh? I meant wrong by the Doz guys doing this blog post for link bait. I think
Moz has every (legal and moral) right to what they did.

------
dohertyjf
Note: definitely worth reading the comments, especially from Sarah Bird (COO
at Moz), and the Inbound thread and comments -
[http://www.inbound.org/articles/view/how-seomoz-sent-us-a-
ta...](http://www.inbound.org/articles/view/how-seomoz-sent-us-a-takedown-
notice)

~~~
benatkin
So apparently you worked for seomoz, and maybe you currently work for moz. Why
not disclose that? <http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnfdoherty>

Those comments don't make seomoz look any better. Look at the date when
doz.com was purchased.

~~~
dohertyjf
I'm a Global Associate for Moz and I work for Distilled, who took over Moz's
consulting business when they went fulltime in SAAS.

 _edited because I was a jerk_

Next, doesn't matter when the domain was purchased. What matters is the date
that the trademark, or the intent to use a trademark, was filed.

~~~
benatkin
I never said that you denied it. I said that you failed to disclose it in your
comment. My earlier comment was just a friendly reminder but since you went
uppercase on me I'll add that you should know better because of the industry
you work in.

~~~
dohertyjf
You are correct, I did. Thanks for the reminder, though a statement like "Why
not disclose that?" is, most of the time, taken as accusatory and not
friendly. But this is not the place for such debates. Let's talk about
copyright legalities :-)

~~~
rhizome
_a statement like "Why not disclose that?" is, most of the time, taken as
accusatory and not friendly._

No it isn't, but it belies a defensiveness and paranoia that you interpret it
that way. Why not take it at face value?

------
MrHater
My comments from inbound.org (co-founded by Rand Fishkin) keep getting
deleted... and I'm following their guidelines, too.

So I've been taking screengrabs - here's the latest:

<http://oi40.tinypic.com/2uyrluu.jpg>

TAGFEE? What a sad joke.

------
mac88
This story gave me some inspiration for a short parody… The Downfall style
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cqGKDInUh0w)

------
davemel37
I wonder if there is precident with Three Letter Trademarks, where almost any
variation can sound similar. (perhaps this is an argument for a longer brand
name that Three letters.)

------
chopsueyar
Remember Facebook having a problem with other *book sites?

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635489>

------
ppradhan
when google came, i was constantly confusing it with yahoo... because both of
the companies have two 'O's in their names.

us customers are so dumb.

finally, i picked a side and chose to use google. this had nothing to do with
the fact that google's product was BETTER. i was simply duped into it.
goddammit!

------
rajahafify
I hate it when I download chromium on linux and gets a Raiden clone though.

------
sososocurious
Hey SeoMoz,

Guck Off

------
just2n
I have decided to rename my seach engine company from SEARCHMoogel to Moogel
(pronounced "moogle") and file a trademark lawsuit against Google for being
too similar. I'll let you know how it goes. I think we have a winning
argument, here.

------
jhonovich
Perhaps NBC can block ABC under the same grounds?

