After a spate of products were removed from the Zazzle product line it became obvious that there is a general movement to copyright and control as many phrases and words and terms as possible within the US legal marketplace. It also became obvious that the world’s larget product on demand website, Zazzle with sites and services going globally, may be under sustained attack by people using these trademarks and any variation thereof.

Caution is a word protected by copyright in the USA (design from an internet chain mail)

Most of what I need to say is below. Feel; free to comment this entry was also entered into the Zazzle forum although it may not survive their moderation.

Copyright and the current practices of some people to go dictionary shopping may eventually be the one of the largest threats Zazzle faces to it’s income stream and designer base

I can’t think of the term but I understand that in the US there are laws relating the purposeful limiting of another person’s ability to do business. That is a very shabby description of what I mean but someone might understand if I am even right. I don’t suggest anyone go after Zazzle on that. I stand firmly behind Zazzle and am proud to be a designer and able to present work through the sites.

It may be that there is precedent to go after dictionary shoppers or others who press shaky copyright claims

Zazzle may be the first large corporation to be seriously damaged by the kind of general copyrighting that takes a wide number of terms in general usage and tries to make them unavailable without license approval. They are the first corporation of their kind to wield the kind of clout we give them with our numbers. Certainly enough to lobby the US senate to protect us from dictionary shoppers with changes to legislation!

It is zazzle who should be running a campaign to change the laws and limit the ability of copyright lawyers and other corporations to go dictionary shopping. I would stand with zazzle if they were to start campaigning on this. To be honest if they don’t campaign on this and laws are not leveled more in our favor there will eventually be no way a serious designer can make any money without a host of lawyers and licenses.

I cannot see that in the future of many Zazzlers.

Another thing we should realize is that at some level this horde of copyright infringement notices is an attempt to kill Zazzle as a threat to many of the big corporate suppliers of cards, shirts and other items we create

This is the second entry

This looks like becoming a problem for everyone globally. We are entering into a global market and the US is pressing their copyright laws on everyone they do business with. That is commendable when movies and books are being forged and pirated but totally unrealistic when a bunch of lawyers in New York or Hollywood run about with dictionaries claiming title to every word in any title or description or anything they can get rights to.

We don’t just want to be protected from Chinese pirates of DVDs we would like to be protected from American patent and copyright pirates as well

In Australia I understand that common usage predates any claims and words such as caution and terms normally associated with it cannot be claimed. Copyright to images and art are also automatic to the creator although how a low income Australian designer could approach an American pirate with a claim is not obvious.

We had this problem recently with the ugg boot (sp) A US company put a trademark on a term that is normally used here to describe a type of boot and sued everyone with the word in their product line including a company that marketed a line of ugg boots. The American Company lost that time but it was so rare as to be news around the world

Zazzle is certainly large enough to be a major campaigner for better legislation and with them going global are probably a major beneficiary of such a campaign.

I can also see a good reason for having Zazzle sites in places like Canada and Australia as separate entities only answering to copyright laws in that country.

If this kind of dictionary piracy continues it is also Zazzle who will be one of the greatest losers as many of the terms used to described products will become unavailable and multitudes of thousands of products will not be able to be placed online.

I hope Zazzle leaves this up. We should be discussing it now as it becomes a looming problem for everyone on POD sites all over the world not to mention our private small business interests