Life through a polaroid is no more

instagata

After a 6 month legal battle I have finally settled with polaroid.

They got the domain www.lifethroughapolaroid.com and I got some cash.

w00t

ChrisGwynne

How much?

instagata

100 million dollars!!!

Mr. Fahrenheit

uh... that's it?

nathan

seriously... is it a fair amount?

Kosmo

Maybe Google would like to buy my Kosmov.net :D

Mark

*buys lifethroughavaio.com* *buys lifethroughathinkpad.com* *buys lifethroughapowerbook.com* *waits for phat cash*

FLC

*buys lifethroughvanilla.com*
*buys lifethroughafilebroswer.com*

*waits for some of Mark's proverbial "phat" cash*

Jazzman

Hehe... funny :P

instagata

you should have seen the initial letter that got send to me by polaroids IP lawyers. fucking naaaastay. I will have to scan it in and post it up

lech

Sounds crazy, what was the initial dispute about though and what was the site content? Obviously they probably didn't like something you were doing with their name so please, do tell :D

instagata

The dispute was over the domain name lifethroughapolaroid.com (how good is it) and the use of the scanned polaroid on the website. They were trying to claim the free promotion of their product was detrimental to their business etc etc etc the initial site content was basically a bunch of photographs that I would put up every month to show everyone. I designed it around the polaroid and it looked really nice and worked a treat. I just looked at it as them wanting the domain name for themselves for marketing purposes

Nathan_A

the other possibility is to protect the name "polaroid" generic. If a company doesn't actively try to protect people from using it in a possibly generic sense (ie, in place of the word photograph), then they can lose the rights to have it a protected trademark. You see the same with Adobe, actively discouring people using Photoshop as a verb (they suggest "I edited this photo with Photoshop", instead of "I photoshopped this photo") bit iffy now, considering polaroid has entered niece status - but you never know

nathan

I will always say I 'photoshopped it', unless I am speaking to a client. Even then, most of my clients are light hearted and would not mind. I know what these companies are trying to do, but I think they are taking it to the extreme. Imaging if google started thinking like this... what then? I would have to use the word 'search' again, instead of just 'google it'.

Kosmo

What would happen if I registered www.iownmicrosoftdotcom.com? Americans are notorious for using company names or product names as a proper verb and it is even accepted to use them in any form of spoken or written text. Examples are: "goole it" instead of "search it" "kodak moment" instead of "photograph" "to xerox" instead of "to copy something with copymachine" "photoshop" instead of "edit image in image editing software" and the list goes on. So I understand their worry about the proper use of their product and company name.

Minisweeper

i must say i've never heard of 'to xerox', but 'kodak moment' especially was actually the kodak marketing phrase so for them to get rid of that would be plain stupid.

Kosmo

Well, mainly the reason why people use the term and why the company name is Xerox is because of the Xerography technique.

lech

/me wanders off to potatochop and polaroid his findings

instagata

hahaha I am betting we will see some crappy polaroid advertisement soon with the domain name. either that or the lawyers for polaroid were hunting for shit to do.

lech

Well, the good news is you were at least compensated and not sued or anything worse. I bet their HR domain whores were looking for shit to do one day and googled up your site. It's rather sad when companies stoop so low to knock someones domain out who isn't even remotely their competition.

instagata

I wasnt even trying to make money off the site it was all for arts sake.