Guys,

Check out the (Honda related) article I dug from IS300.net.
The Tony person in the article is the webmaster of IS300.net.

Pretty outrageous.

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,...7,34546,00.html

Here's the forum thread: http://www.is300.net/forum_new/Forum1/HTML/004010.html


[This message has been edited by PsychoBen (edited December 08, 2000).]

 

No offense to any lawyers on this board, but that is what you get when a large company lets it's legal team take charge of a project. I have learned in my years in business that anytime legal or accounting meets to make decisions or look at issues, you had damn better make sure someone from sales and/or customer relations is present too!

 

This has been an on going fear for some time. While I think these sites have done a great deal for Honda I have to wonder if the 1/2 grind would have ever been fixed without these sites.

 

"I have learned in my years in business that anytime legal or accounting meets to make decisions or look at issues, you had damn better make sure someone from sales and/or customer relations is present too!"

That was my first thought with it that I couldn't believe anyone that has ever dealt with the public in a positive role would ever do things that way. Ford recently went after blueoval.com and there is an ongoing fight between a guy with the last name "Nissan" that has nissan.com for his company.

And then there is our upcomming name change since Honda says that our dealership agreement gives them final say in how we use any of their trademarks and they don't want us to use "Honda" in our web address anymore... We had even sent a request through to their legal department months before going online to make sure it was okay. After several messages saying we were planning on doing it and no answers we went ahead with it. Their response to us asking about that now "We get tons of requests and can't possibly read or answer all of them" But they seemed to find the time to send us a cease and decist order now. And the kicker is that if we weren't a dealership they wouldn't have a signed agreement to hold over us on it.

-Trevor

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Z3toS2K:
[B]I have learned in my years in business that anytime legal or accounting meets to make decisions or look at issues, you had damn better make sure someone from sales and/or customer relations is present too!

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sunchild:
[B] Whoa.

 

Though I concur whole-heartedly with my learned colleague Sunchild regarding the neccessity for legal/sales/marketing/accounting synergy, I do think that what Honda is doing is poorly thought out or at least poorly executed. It is important to protect your trademark and goodwill, however it is important to not squander goodwill in doing so.

 

Ok. I was being a little harsh, I admit. I guess you were taking the brunt of some of the angst I don't get to express to clients.

I have often thought that it would be smart if a major company hired a team of trademark lawyers and gave them instructions to conduct themselves in a touchy-feely manner involving plenty of investigation and thoughful contemplation about how to approach infringers. Perhaps there are such companies, but we never hear about them. I suspect that Honda's bungling is the result of an overworked law department and poor internal communications. Hey, they're a big company, WTF!

 

I don't think Honda's lawyers are responsible for anything more than executing company policy. Remember Honda went after some site which was posting Honda TSBs. Funny, you don't see heavy handed stupidity in the product, but check out Honda USA management. Anyway, good luck to the Schreibers going up against Honda lawyers. Bambi meets Godzilla. Not pretty.

2x6spds

 

In Honda's defense, they have to protect their trademark and their brand. . .plain and simple. This image needs to be controlled by the company and not some baffoon that can post and/or say anything in an eneducated light about Honda or their products using the trademarked name to generate traffic.

On the other hand, that same baffoon can set up his/her own branding and marketing strategy to offer his/her own opinion on Honda.

So I can see why Honda wants to shut down the websites that use the Honda name or any of their product names in personal url titles. To enforce the law, Honda cannot only go after those sites/people that portray their image in a bad light, they HAVE to go after all people and sites that use their trademarks illegally.

If you notice though, the sites that may portray Honda in a bad light seem to go down first.

Urmil
Luder94