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Passive Aggressive Skype Lawyers See End Of Blog |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 30 April 2007 |
Two blogs www.skype-gadgets.com and www.skype-watch.com have been closed by their owner after a letter from Skype's lawyers.
A copy of the email blog publisher Jan Geirnaert recieved from Skype IP Lawyer Seema Sharma is here at the moment, but I can't guarantee how long it will stay up.
In the email Sharma says "In the first instance, I should like to
stress that we work very hard at Skype to prevent third parties from
illegally registering and using domains with the trade mark SKYPE in
the URL where the domains in question are not officially endorsed by or
associated with Skype. It goes without saying that we do not want third
party domains and the associated websites to appear to the wider
community as being associated with or endorsed by Skype when they are
not. I take your point that it may be the case that there are other
Skype related domain names registered which do not belong to Skype".
Not too scary, certainly not enough to get you to walk away from
two years worth of blogging about the company. But then in the next
paragraph Sharma writes:
"However, you should be assured that we try to (and are very successful
at) both not only making extensive pre-emptive defensive registrations
for domains but also retrieving domain names that have been registered
without regard to Skype's trade mark rights. Should you require more
information about our domain name enforcement policy, please contact
our external domain name specialist attorney, Don Moody
(email address removed).
"Therefore, whilst I appreciate that you have extended us the
courtesy of an approach for consent to use certain promotional items in
connection with your sites, you will no doubt understand why we can not
depart from our standard policy and give you permissions to use the
domains you have registered for any purpose, including blogging. Nor
can we give you permission to promote sites owned by you which are not
associated with nor endorsed by Skype.
"I should mention that we are always happy when third parties
enthusiastically promote Skype however, we will not endorse promotional
activities (e.g the promotion of your sites www.skype-gadgets.com and
www.skype-watch.com on chopsticks) where Skype has no control over the
domains in question."
Well that was certainly enough to send Geirnaert packing.
"I'm not a sadomasochist. Neither am I an idiot. By doing
this, Skype sent me the signal not do any of this blogging wise,
business wise, in any way," Geirnaert is quoted as saying.
The blogger vows to blog on elsewhere but may tone down his rhetoric:
"Maybe they're getting too 'corporate' to tolerate any criticism" he is
quoted as saying.
The whole episode has the VoIP blogging fraternity in a bit of a spin,
but even ex-Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, putting in his two cents worth.
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