As far as I can tell the agency responsible for the campaign is Mortierbrigade [1]. I haven't been able to confirm it for sure but the original source [2] I found it for seems to be quite knowledge about the Belgian advertising scene.
Adecco's/Mortierbrigade attempts to defend themselves on Facebook have been rather halfhearted so far.[3]
They made it clear that they see nothing wrong with this in principle, they act as if it's all an accidental naming collision, and they start right out of the gate with the old "we're sorry some people are upset" non-apology.
How distinctive is the actual video of the "doppelganger"? I'm genuinely curious, since it's now been taken down.
The name alone could easily have been an accidental collision from a concept developed independently; I'm pretty sure I've searched for available around the world in 80... variants as possible name ideas for a travel site, and I'd never seen Turner's site before (I have read Jules Verne though)
It's a shitty excuse for a nonapology even if it was a genuine accident though.
Considering the actual name of their project is his exact blog URL [1], I can't imagine they looked that hard to see if anyone else had the idea first.
I don't understand why they think it has to be a "mutually beneficial" solution. That would imply they get benefit out of this too, and they haven't done anything that warrants them getting any kind of benefit out of this blogger's project.
I find nothing capturing about a European hipster running around the world trying out jobs. Especially when I add in the thought that the idea was so clearly jacked from someone else.
Unfortunately thats what a large number of ad agencies spend their time doing. Selling ideas they see online off to brands without contacting or paying the original creator
On the other side of the fence: a lot of the time clients will actually send stuff they've seen online to their ad agencies and ask for it to be 'repurposed'. It happens both ways.
I'm surprised that anyone can get a trademark on "Around the World in 80 Xs." I would think that you'd have to get "Around the World in 80 Dishes with Slavko Slobovich" or "John Johnson's Around the World in 80 Trees." Maybe changing the number of Xs or going "Around the Channel Islands" or something.
I would think anything built on the bare single variable snowclone would be too cliche to be exclusive.
I hate to be a downer, but this is why Trademark law was invented. If you don't or can't get a trademark on your brand, it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time, money, and energy promoting it.
There are a lot of slimy people in the world, and if you aren't protected eventually one of them will take advantage. Even a trademark might not stop it, but it gives you some ammo to fight back.
You don't lose trademark rights just because someone else files a trademark on a name you're already using in commerce prior to that registration. In fact, trademark rights are common law rights -- you don't need to file a trademark to claim a priority right to that mark.
In this case, his prior usage trumps any attempt for Adecco to claim ownership on the mark for their subsequent usage -- no matter how much they try to register those rights with the government. A trademark registration is exactly what it sounds like a - registration of a mark with the government. It doesn't give you any rights to ownership over a mark that pre-existed the registration.
Exactly. This is why this has nothing to do with Trademark law. They are stepping on a mark that's already being used in commerce by someone else. Their attempt to claim ownership through TM doesn't really grant them any rights in usage. And yes, they are attempting to register the mark. It won't go far.
His failure to register it means he can't sue them for damages either; at most he can obstruct their acquisition of trademark status. A fine example of why startups should have a legal strategy as well as a technical one, a marketing one, and so on.
In this case I don't think a trademark would be possible, being based almost entirely on another popular (possibly trademarked) phrase. Has Adecco actually tried to claim trademark for themselves?
Yes - they attempted to register it on April 9, 2013, according to the USPTO. But it hasn't even been examined yet. My guess is that it will fail on a common law basis, and even if it doesn't, it will be subject to an opposition period, and it will be opposed. And it will not be granted.
You're confusing copyright and trademark. If he didn't challenge the trademark registration in the required period he will have a nearly impossible time challenging it now.
You don't lose rights to a pre-existing mark, even if someone subsequently registers it. And a challenge is only valid during an opposition period for a registered mark. This mark is not yet registered! So yes, he could challenge it during opposition.
As indicated by the USPTO TESS Database, the mark was filed on April 9, 2013, but it hasn't even been processed, let alone registered by the US PTO [5]. This means that the opposition period hasn't come yet. That means that oh yes sirree, Turner definitely has a chance to oppose this mark! And oppose he will. And win he will. So, nothing lost here. A TM symbol confers no rights to the claimant other than common law rights, which Turner has a pre-existing claim on.
But he wouldn't even need to challenge it - a subsequent registration does not entitle ownership for pre-existing marks. See all the citations below [1-4]
That's all fine, but in the meantime his business model has fallen apart and his opposition to the marketing firm has zero economic value. He can relaunch, most likely, but it's going to be a lot more expensive and time-consuming than filing for a mark in the first place would have been.
Ah, great. So he does have time to oppose it. Even though it's relatively simple to oppose he'll probably still have to put up a ~$6K retainer for a lawyer to oppose. And if he wanted to challenge their use of his trademark (even though he didn't register yet) he'd probably have to pay out ~$25K for a retainer, but realistically, he'd probably spend around $50k to challenge use of the trademark.
Further, if he wasn't using the trademark for commerce but the new registration is using it for commerce he isn't guaranteed to win. Trademark is not the same as copyright - that's why apple can take over the apple trademark for music.
That's a pretty lame (and tone deaf) response. Not only will it do little to dampen the Internet Furies, but it will probably just make it worse. They need to make it right with Turner ASAP in a public manner. Otherwise, Hell Hath No Fury like an Internet Scorned.
> Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
My guess is that the page is in fact down (probably MySQL is stopped), but that the permissions on the 500 error page are set wrong and thus Apache is returning a 403 as it tries to show the error page, instead of a 500.
Perhaps Adecco/PR firm reached out to the author, to solve the matter. Or that is what we can hope at least.
The site appears to be password protected now so something definitely happened. Or the site just got overloaded and the author decided to pull the plug.
The whole site is down, which makes me wonder if they exceeded their bandwidth due to coverage of this. If so, at least the story is getting attention.
Another possibility is that they were advised by council to take it down, but it does no good to speculate.
That's brilliant. One of the business development guys I work for was showing me a company that aggregates social media feeds for integration into your website, I asked how these get filtered, "no, they just get everything". Never understood why you want something displayed on your website you have NO control over!
A (TM) mark is an indication of a trademark claim, not an actual registered trademark which would be (R). Clearly, it's not a particularly defensible claim as there's identifiable prior usage.
You don't even need to register a trademark to have common law rights. In the US at least.
It depends, you can win a trademark dispute if you have been using the mark for a sufficent period before someone else registers it. Assuming that a trademark qualifies for protection, rights to a trademark can be acquired in one of two ways: (1) by being the first to use the mark in commerce; or (2) by being the first to register the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO"). http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm
It seems like every other issue of Private Eye has something almost exactly like this in their Ad Nauseum column. A lot of marketing companies are stealing ideas from old viral videos and art projects.
I wonder if this is due to the age boundary between old farts and digital natives. A young YouTube-aware creative could easily filch ideas knowing there's a good chance that the senior suits who will sign off the campaign will likely never have come across the source.
(In fact, my teenage kids also do this to me all the time, but I read rather more of Reddit than they suspect)
This was on reddit last night - I can't access the article, but the people in the comments on the reddit thread were having massive misconceptions about trademark vs copyright. Also, anyone can put TM next to something - it doesn't mean they trademarked it. It's the (R) that means you actually put forth effort to trademark something.
It's down now. Not because they regret making the video. Oh no, they don't have that sense of regret quite yet. It's down because they can't handle the velocity and fierceness of the negative comments.
Great introduction and images, you worked hard on this! Get any lawyer and kick their billionairism ass five ways to Sunday for $$$treble$$$ psychotic grief damages. Site shows they ruined you.
So an effective cease and and desist letter. Prepare to doubly rebutt these criminal butts' rebuttal:
I feel obligated to note that the soap is as great as the label is crazy. As a bonus, you have something entertaining to read if you ever get bored in the shower.
He won't get any damages because he didn't file a trademark application of his own first. All he can do is obstruct the trademark being granted to them instead, then file his own application. The end.
68 subscribers 16,535 views Youtube
2,2k Twitter
just has to reach out to the right channels reddit/twitter/fb to start a PR disaster for a Adecco.
Around the world in 80 (days/jobs/parties/x)
Lets see how they will turn it around, they got bitten by a mistake of not doing enough market research.