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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

RED is a trademark...

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Brook Willard said:
Exactly my point. It's a bummer that it gets used incorrectly [hence the vast quantity of people using "RED" in their name], but the reality is that people will all eventually change because - on paper - it's a trademark issue.
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Compliance in Asia will be interesting.. trademarks, intellectual property rights.
Scarcely recognised in many many cases. Should prove interesting over time.
 
Jim, I understand where you are coming from, and I think it's a good idea to state your intentions as to protecting your trademark so we know what to expect. None of this affects me as yet because there is no Red in my company name and so forth, and I have no plans for such.

Two comments:

-There are many media and production companies that have Red in their name, that PRE-DATE Red Digital Cinema Camera Company. I can't image you would try to go after them, for reasons which should be self-explanatory.

-Red, unlike Sony, Panasonic, Panavision, etc., is a color, and is a commonly used adjective. A trademark involving the word "Red" might protect against the use of "Red Dragon Camera Company", for example, or "Red Dragon Camera Service and Support", but it would be a real stretch to protect against "Red Dragon Films", as that clearly would not lead a reasonable person to believe that "Red Dragon Films" was manufacturing, selling, supporting, or servicing cameras. A reasonable person would assume that "Red Dragon Films" is some kind of film production or distribution company.

You have stated several times what I think is the key concept for this issue, that you will protect your trademark to avoid confusion as to who is or is not officially connected to Red Digital Cinema Camera Company. An important thing to do, obviously, as your experience has shown. But I assume and hope that you will apply your efforts to protect your trademark to those cases, and not beyond. Camera manufacture, sales, service, and support are obvious areas for protection.

It's all lawyer stuff beyond a certain point, but actions speak louder than words, and how you apply this policy will be part of your continuing reputation, which in my opinion is very, very good.

I am a very happy Red customer and look forward to the upcoming products.
 
I think the way to look at it is - would your company include the word 'RED' if the RED One camera were not around?

If the answer is no then you should reconsider your brand.

Anyway, this Digital Cinema thing will grow - there will be more than RED in the market in the future - why not have a brand that will be able to encompass all of them?
 
Sycophant said:
I think the way to look at it is - would your company include the word 'RED' if the RED One camera were not around?
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I think i may of said that a few posts ago, you're right Sycophant, this is a very good way to (loosely) look at it.
 
Jannard said:
Shawn... it is tricky. But we have no choice to protect the brand. The Red Ninjas changed their name when we explained our situation. They got it. Now we have to hope the rest will. ibloom clearly understood and figured out a nice workaround... good job.

The last people we want to piss off are our customers. But even Ray Charles can see that using RED in the name is something we can't allow to happen in this industry. We do have some creative options in mind for some of the current ones, but please don't add to the list. We just can't allow them.

Jim
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I'm guessing there shouldn't be a problem with companies formed before Red existed, which include the name Red in it. Like Red Rock (an area in Vegas you'll soon be moving to, etc.)
 
Heard about the issue before, glad to see now the thing is officially taken care of.
As for me, my situation is:
My company has no red or red related words in the name, logo or graphics, as it's a production/post production company existing from some years now.
When we decided to order our RED also for renting purposes, we saw that many red renting companies using red related web domains (both for redirecting and for company name) and we thought it would be a good idea to have some red renting related web domains just to redirect to our red renting sub-page.
The point is, bought some domains many months ago, still never used them (still waiting our redcam), any hope that they can be ok if used just for redirecting?
If not, what to do? I can understand what Jim and Jarred are saying and do not want to piss them off, but had to pay for the domains and feel a bit unconfortable to just let them expire unused .... :(
 
Sycophant said:
I think the way to look at it is - would your company include the word 'RED' if the RED One camera were not around?

If the answer is no then you should reconsider your brand.
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This is a great way to approach it. the word RED, especially being written in all capitals only means anything in this industry because the RED company worked hard to build it up. It's only fair that they would not want anybody taking advantage of it.

Shawn Booth said:
And the Beetles a bug.
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Deanan said:
And Apple is still making deals with the Beetles for using Apple in conjunction with being in the music business now which conflicts with Apple Records.
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By the way, it's BEATLES, not BEETLES. Just a play with the name of the bug and the word beat as in rock'n roll beat.
 
Valde said:
The point is, bought some domains many months ago, still never used them (still waiting our redcam), any hope that they can be ok if used just for redirecting?
If not, what to do? I can understand what Jim and Jarred are saying and do not want to piss them off, but had to pay for the domains and feel a bit unconfortable to just let them expire unused .... :(
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From my past readings I believe that domain names are not considered to constitute a 'mark' with regard to trademark law. Having a domain like rentared.com pointing to your site's RED Rental page isn't inherently a dilution of RED's trademarks. The bigger issues arise when the domain name is also being used as a trading name.

I'd assume it works better for general terms also 'RedRental.com' and 'RedPostServices.com' but wouldn't be cool for something like 'RedCamera.com' or 'RedDigitalCinema.com'.

I don't own any RED-related domains, but if I did I'd email RED and outline what I have, what I want to do and see what they say.
 
When a person can no longer speak or write a word, then that person no longer has freedom of speech. As such, trademarks in their modern form are in direct conflict with the U.S. constitution's first amendment. For example, lets say you want to paint a picture, and the red name comes into your mind and you paint it in bold red colors on your canvas, maybe you paint a picture of the red one in there somewhere, and you surround the camera with images of angels and devils, children and elders, and it fuels your emotions in a certain way that makes you want to share your painting with the world... are you going to be allowed to share it? Not according to trademark law, not unless you paint over those words (and maybe the red one body too). Here's another situation... is your personal name initialized R.E.D.? Well, then you can't use your initials to advertise your product. Is your company name long-winded (Regional Endocrinological Distributors)? Well you'd best tear up your business cards because you can't use that space saving R.E.D. acronym anymore. Is your product colored Red? No, you can't mention that color when you're selling it.

If you value freedom, then you have to ignore trademarks, especially when they are fundamental words. If Red is concerned about branding conflicts, it should change its company name to something completely unrelated to known words. Or insist on spelling out the entire "Red Digital Cinema" name on its products. It's the "Red Digital Cinema One", not the "Red One". Or, use the acronym if you're so inclined - "RDC One".

Of course, for those of you actually thinking that you'll follow through on my train of thought, you should probably not. Fighting for freedom usually results in being punished by the courts and eventually going to jail. So balance out your rebellious streak with your tolerance for discomfort. Personally, I'll probably just sit around, hoping that nobody trademarks the other colors, because then the world would start to look very bland.

Oh, and I should mention I'm slightly biased in this, because I just happen to have created a website a few years back, and it has the letters "red" prefixing the name... http://www.RedMade.com. I'm not going to abandon the site just because of trademark threats. Though, it would be quite a beauty of a name for Red to own... maybe I should entertain offers from Red for the site? :usd:
 
florianstadler.com said:
On the other hand is a company trademarking a COLOR. I find it odd to trademark something that is in the public domain as much as a color.
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It's a pretty everyday occurrence, nothing special - it's in quite a limited field (image acquisition), so it's not like they've monopolised the use of the word "Red". There are other companies/organizations called Red in other fields (e.g. Bono's Red charity product line etc). But if someone else started making cameras using the word Red then that's a no-no - it's like if you invented a great new Hi-Def disc standard and wanted to call it Blue-Disc, I'm sure the Blu-Ray group would get a bit litigious.

Also companies like Orange (mobile phone network) get very possessive about not only their name in their field but even a rival using anything even remotely approaching their shade of orange (in a similar way I think T Mobile tried to protect their use of that strangely disgusting shade of cerise).

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the LG / Scarlet legal case Jim mentioned because LG don't make digital motion picture cameras (as far as I know they don't even make digital stills cameras, although they do make camera phones) and their product was a screen not a camera...maybe this shows RED are planning on getting into making 4K screens!!!:detective2:
 
Lowkus said:
When a person can no longer speak or write a word, then that person no longer has freedom of speech.
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The 1st amendment does offer a theoretical complete protection of speech. But in the US system of checks and balances, it is well established that the burden is placed upon the States to determine if and when restriction is necessary.

There are many, many things which are limited, such as hate speech, defamation, obscenity, and sedition.

Over the years, the Federal and State Governments as well as the Legislature have redefinied what those words mean, but they all impose legal (in the US) restrictions on the 1st amendment.

There is also the "harm principle" which has been upheld in various ways time and time again. The most famous example of which is the classic, "yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theatre."

So, you may want the 1st amendment to be an absolute and inviolable statement, but it just ain't that way. Even the Founding Fathers wrote at length about the fact that the Freedom of Speech clause was not absolute.

Lucas
 
It comes down to three things:

Legality, Practicality, and Courtesy.

As a matter of legality, a rule of thumb would be the broader the commonality of the word, the narrower the scope of your trademark protection. And here RED is on shaky ground as any good attorney would argue that RED is so broad (much broader than Apple, which is also on pretty shaky ground legally) that it can't be trademarked. This is why companies pick names like Accenture or Relisys - they have no problems because it is not a word at all. I have AquaVideo because 25 years ago there was nothing like the combination. Similarly REDONE is stronger legally as a trademark.

But trademark is also established in common law through usage and this is where Apple has strength and RED to a similar extent in the Video/digital cinema realm - they have done so much to establish the brand (and succeeded - as so many have pointed out - we primarily want the RED in the name to because RED has done a phenomenal job in creating this brand awareness) that it would be inequitable to totally deny protection.

Practicality: As a practical matter - if you have deep pockets - you have a decent chance of winning if you are not directly making a digital cinema camera and choose to go to court. But you also have to realize that Jim/RED are not being dicks when they fight it hard. The law REQUIRES you to aggressively challenge the use of your trademark to keep it. It isn't just "use it or lose it" it is "DEFEND IT OR LOSE IT". So even if they want to be nice, eventually they will have to bring the hammer down.

Courtesy: I think this is where the rubber meets the road. What makes RED unique is although it makes a complex, expensive physical product it really was created in cyberspace - a concept of what you could make (a digital cine camera) and how much it would cost, that developed a hardcore following and community before anything real existed. I think Jim wants RED to be as successful as it can be and maybe make another billion, but I doubt if that was the real motivation. And as such there is now a RED brotherhood (and sisterhood). Legally, I think the REDninjas could have made a very solid case, but I think they took the high road. In hindsight, maybe RED should have come up with some Accenture-like non word for their product, but I think they are too far down the road to change names and Jim is simply asking nicely for us not to force them to do what the law requires them to do. My feeling is if someone asks me nicely, and there is no huge overriding reason not to, I ought to comply and it seems like the RED community at large ought to do the same regardless of legal rights.
 
Seems like an insoluble problem. I agree that Red need to protect the brand. Fine and dandy.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but you either shoot video, or film, or HD, or Red. Red's different, that's how we've all been encouraged to think about it. And it works, it's accurate to think of it in that way because the methodology is different to the other formats. It needs to be described in a distinct way - and so we have all logically settled on Red.

So how then do you/we now describe this field of image production? Or do we lump it in with the others, diminishing the 'uniqueness' of the camera that has been so central to a lot of the excitement around it?

Jim et al: Is there another word that you would replace the use of Red with for popular use? Is there a term that the company uses but does not trademark (or would be willing to let the trademark fold) that could be said to accurately describe this type of image acquisition? People seem to be gravitating towards 4K. Maybe that's enough - but surely as the "competition steps up it's game" then the uniqueness of the camera will be watered down even further as other 4K cameras become accessible.

Maybe this is a question for Master Nattress - how would you describe it on a technical level?

Or is this irrelevant because you just reference Red on your company website (that is named after something completely different, as people have been doing)? Is this the only solution?
 
I'm not a lawyer... I understand somewhat of trademark law, after reading the legal analysis over recent trademark battles like Apple v Apple. So I'll leave interpretation of legal stuff with trademark law up to Jim. But in no way does trademark law limit free speech. It does not stop you using the word "red" in text, speech, or on a website. It does stop you using the word "red" in such a way that it would confuse with RED Digital Cinema, their products and brand or would be seen to dilute RED's trademarks. For what that actually means in practice, see a lawyer....

Graeme
 
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