'Red' name in URLs

[Justin McAleece]

In SEO, names, keywords and titles are everything. What do you search for when you want to rent a red camera? Probably "rent a RED camera" or "red one rental." We chose the latter. redonerental.net Since RED has said repeatedly that they do not rent their cameras except in extraordinary repair situations we felt more than safe. Besides AFAIK, Red does not own this site, Jarred does and that's what might have been the problem based on one of my comments. This isn't RED's site any more than it is everyone else's who has come on here and made it such a great place to read, learn and take part in discussions. That's all I was trying to do, have a discussion.

 

[Johnny Friday]

if you type in redrentals.com it brings you to indierentals.com. If you type in redcamerarentals.com it brings you to hdcamerarentals.com is this that they own those domain names and are having the address redirect to their sites? is that legal?

the list goes on as you put in just about anything RED camera related. So where is the clear cut black and white on this?

 

[Steve Gal]

basically we got a letter saying "you have 30 days to transfer your website domain to RED, thank you."

We are still reviewing our options at this point and seeing if we agree.

Today we received another letter that basically said "since you're going to transfer your domain, here's how to do it. Thank you."

So at this point we feel a little bullied and bewildered.

If this is true, that means they would have to forfeit the domain that they own that is being forwarded. Not still use it.

 

[Johnny Friday]

In SEO, names, keywords and titles are everything. What do you search for when you want to rent a red camera? Probably "rent a RED camera" or "red one rental." We chose the latter. redonerental.net Since RED has said repeatedly that they do not rent their cameras except in extraordinary repair situations we felt more than safe. Besides AFAIK, Red does not own this site, Jarred does and that's what might have been the problem based on one of my comments. This isn't RED's site any more than it is everyone else's who has come on here and made it such a great place to read, learn and take part in discussions. That's all I was trying to do, have a discussion.

Justin, had you thought about complying with a post many moons ago that i think Jannard had asked for folks to add some type of disclaimer about not being associated with RED....etc, etc.....Had you done that maybe the heat would not be on possibly? I just went to your site and it might be construed a tad bit misleading with the opening sentance on your index page reading:
"If you are looking for a RED One Camera you have found the right place."

Would seem to me that your site implies just a bit too much of a connection to RED. Now that said, i'm only assuming that this is the case, but I do see a whole lot of other RED websites out there as another posted pointed out.

 

[Justin McAleece]

Yeah at some point the disclaimer got lost and hasn't been put back up. I'd have no problem putting it back on there. In fact, I'd have no problem having it be the first sentence of the whole page as long as it lets us keep our website.

 

[Michael Hastings]

the list goes on as you put in just about anything RED camera related. So where is the clear cut black and white on this?

There isn't a clear cut black and white. Often the one with the biggest war chest wins. A part of the problem is that you are required to defend whatever rights you have or lose them, hence Red lawyers probably go after anything close.

Generally speaking the more generic the term the more limited the scope of your trademark rights. It doesn't get much more generic than "red" since it is one of three primary RGB colors. What that scope is exactly comes down to what a judge decides.

IIRC his website had redone as part of it which is much more problematic than simply redrentals or redcamera since you could just put some red paint or stickers on all of your cameras. But Redone refers to a specific camera so pretty clear that Red DCC has those rights.

 

[Emanuel A.]

Nice simple answer.

But as such, probably incorrect/misleading.

"Each country or territory has its own trade mark system.
The mark BUDWEISER is a classic example: in some countries it refers exclusively to the beer brewed by the Czech brewery; in some countries the trade mark is owned by the US brewers of Bud."

So to be accurate, which countries has "Red" been trademarked in?

Certainly in the USA.
What about other countries?

(...)

The things are well much organized than what anyone can eventually think at first glance.

The Madrid system for the international registration of marks under the Madrid Agreement (1891) and the Madrid Protocol (1989) offers a trademark owner the possibility to have his trademark protected in several countries through the international system administered by the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Geneva).

International registration allows protection to be acquired for a trademark in some or all of the countries of the Madrid Union. The trademark can then enjoy protection in those countries that is equivalent to the rights granted any other trademark registration in the original country.

As simple as that.

To those interested in more detailed sources of information, here are two interesting links for lex data on the subject matter:

http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/
http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/

Hope this helps.

And with specific reference to domain names (...)

In the last link, you can select the topic addressed only to, as for instance, domain names by country.

 

[Stephen Williams]

basically we got a letter saying "you have 30 days to transfer your website domain to RED, thank you."
.

Having received various threatening letters from Lawyers acting for individuals & Corporations (never from Red) It's basically down to who is the better poker player, ultimately large corporation have more to loose if the case goes against them, everything in life is negotiable.

Edit, FWIW I own www.fcuk.net, which has previously been subject to litigation with French Connection.

 

[Nelson Goforth]

URLs and website names

URLs and website names

Putting "Red" in the URL of a site is pretty much useless, in terms of someone being able to find your site via a search engine. And if the URL were something like "redonecamerarentalsincleveland.com" no one would ever want to type it in.

My experience in search engine optimization (SEO) tells me that words in URLs don't help all that much, unless it's a very short one (red.com, indie4k.com) that you can verbally tell someone (and even then you have to be sure to say "and that's numeral 4, not spelled out").

I just did a Google search on "red camera rental". Of the first two pages of results (20 sites) three of them had "red" in the URL (excepting one hit for this site). If "red" were a big deal then why would "elysianpictures.com", "indierentals.com" and "rockymountain4k.com" (my site) have placed so well? And why run the risk of irritating Red (or their lawyers) for so little value? And what if you were to add a Phantom to your package, would you change the name of the company/URL?

I somewhat regret having placed "4K" in our URL (and business name) since the "4K" bit is soon to be eclipsed, but when the attorney said "what's the name of your company?" we realized we'd never really thought about it and there it was. Oh, well. That's why I have 'rm4k.com' as a backup URL.

Nelson

 

[John Marchant]

I'm sure things would have panned out differently if you were using fcuk.net to promote yourself as a retailer of French Connection's products...

 

[joshua csehak]

You guys probably know this already, but unlike a patent, you have to defend a trademark, or you lose it. So Red is legally (and business-ly) obligated to come down as hard as they can on anyone possibly violating their trademark, even if they personally think it's not a big deal. Just for the record.

 

[Cameron Wilson]

You guys probably know this already, but unlike a patent, you have to defend a trademark, or you lose it. So Red is legally (and business-ly) obligated to come down as hard as they can on anyone possibly violating their trademark, even if they personally think it's not a big deal. Just for the record.

Just pass a Kleenex to anyone that cries about it...