"Makerspace" is a brand now, apparently

[mattfreund]

Hey, thought this might be of interest to some of us, wrote about it on my local mailing list too....

Make Media, of "Makerfaire", just launched this:

http://makezine.com/2015/04/29/welcome-to-makerspace/

Makerspace.com

Just like how companies like Kleenex, Q-tip, KrazyGlue, X-Acto, Duck Tape and Google have not liked when their brand becomes the term for a generic, I'm not a big fan of the reverse. When a company takes a broadly used adjective and claims it as their own, every time someone looks for or talks about "a" makerspace they're going to be promoting, driving traffic to, or getting confused with this particular website. It would be like Beer brand beer (exists only in movies) or Car brand cars.

I wonder if they'll soon start claiming the term and attempting to disallow others from using it.

[Seth Hardy]

so it's like google+ for makers? 

i don't think you need to worry about the long-term sticking power of this website.

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seth hardy
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[doug moen]

According to the MakerSpace.com/terms-of-service,

6.  Restrictions on Trademark Usage

6.1 The names and associated logos for MakerSpace, Maker Faire, Maker Shed, Make:, MakerCamp, MakerCon, and the Makey robot images are trademarks owned by Maker Media. Unless you are licensed by Maker Media under a specific licensing program or agreement, you may not use these names or logos to label, promote, or endorse any product or service, although you may use these logos to refer to the associated websites and Service.

you cannot use the word "MakerSpace" to "label, promote or endorse any product or service".

I don't know if MakerSpace is actually a registered trademark (yet), or if somebody just unthinkingly generated boilerplate. I went to tmsearch.uspto.gov, and I could find the trademark for "Maker Faire", but I couldn't find "MakerSpace". Somebody has trademarked "Makers Space" for "Incubation services, namely, rental of office space to freelancers, start-ups, existing businesses and non-profits.". But I can imagine that people in their legal office might automatically apply for this trademark, just on principle, and it might not have been granted yet.

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[Matt Freund]

> But I can imagine that
> people in their legal office might automatically apply for this trademark,
> just on principle, and it might not have been granted yet.

Since you seem to know more about this than me, any idea how people
like us could insert ourselves into the process and stop a specific
brand from owning a generic term we all use to describe ourselves in a
non-branded way?

I know that the process afterwards is.... start suing. No one will,
so, once it's granted, I suspect it'll be owned indefinitely.

That said, Make is moderately benevolent when it comes to using their
registered terms.

Anyone who wants to host a mini-Makerfaire can basically just ask and
get approved to use it. It must be non-profit and the money must be
kept in a non-profit account, there's several pages of branding
requirements, but otherwise they're very nice about it.

It doesn't mean they will always be nice about it. And even then, it
doesn't matter how nice, they shouldn't just get to decide everyone
has to ask their permission.

On our local mailing list, one of our directors who has dealt with
Make for his own projects and some of ours, said the point isn't to
lock things down, it's to be an open resource for all spaces to use
and to promote and encourage maker culture.

That's fine, do it under a different name than the one we all use.
Make Media is not our mothership.

Before Makerfaire, no one knew what "a" Makerfaire could or would be.
So, "Makerfaire"? Go ahead.

Before they claimed "Makerspace", the whole damned world of spaces
already used the term to describe themselves, no es bueno.

[Derek Jacoby]

Might be best for us to just proactively register it. Canada is a first use country, Victoria Makerspace can show use back to 2010. Unless O'Reilly can show use prior to that specifically in Canada they shouldn't be able to block it. (To be clear, if we register it using the Victoria Makerspace records it must be entirely defensive - ie. Only to prevent usage from being restricted rather than for us to restrict anyone else's use of the term.)

I'd love to pitch in on such an effort. Filing fees are only a few hundred bucks, I believe.

Otherwise I think we need to continually watch the gazette and file an objection during a time window, which seems unlikely for me to notice anyway.

[doug moen]

My guess was organizational stupidity. The intelligence of an organization is inversely proportional to the number of employees, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, etc.

Turns out I was correct. Dave Harvey at Think|Haus sent me this:

I raised the issue of trademarking "makerspace" with Dale Dougherty of MakerMedia. Here is his response:

" I agree with you and I'm trying to get our team to understand the issue and have it reflected in our language.    I don't want us to do anything to restrict Makerspace for its use as a physical workshop -- I spent considerable effort to promote that term for that purpose.   We do want to protect the name for the online community, which I think is Makerspace.com.   As I said, I'm trying to get management and legal to understand these distinctions, and be clear that we have no intention to limit use of makerspace."

Dave Harvey

Think|Haus

[Matt Freund]

> "We do want to protect the name for the online community, which I think is Makerspace.com."

I'm not sure the scope of what this means.

What about spaces claiming the term for their online presence, and using "Makerspace" to describe themselves generically?

I'm also concerned about the use of the term being snared, even in a non-legal sense. People are going to be looking for a Makerspace, and keep getting pushed towards this org, confusion will arise. But, I guess nothing we could do about that.

> Might be best for us to just proactively register it. [...] Filing fees are only a few hundred bucks, I believe.

I'm fairly sure registering a trademark is like ~$10,000. I might be wrong. but I thought it was around there.

It's not like filing for a registered copyright (super cheap), or like a patent (which is in the same ballpark of $thousands).

> Unless O'Reilly can show use prior to that specifically in Canada they shouldn't be able to block it.

I'm less concerned with who would win in court, as, if it has to go to court we're all already lost and bankrupt.

[Tyler Rivard]

Looks like it costs $250 to apply, and if approved, another $200 to register. Also of note is the $750 fee to file an opposition to an application. http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/h_wr02003.html

How many 'spaces in canada are using Makerspace in their name? A cursory search finds:
Victoria Makerspace
Makerspace Nanaimo
Kamloops Makerspace
Helios Makerspace

And two commercial opperations:
Icewire Makerspace
Makerspace Canada

[doug moen]

Yeah, I don't think we'll be trademarking a name that is already being used by existing nonprofit and profit corporations in canada.

[Matt Freund]

Had a brief chat with Dale today and he's already aware from a variety
of sources about it being a concern. Make's having some internal
discussions about it to figure out what they want to do that makes
everyone happy.

[Matt Freund]

Well, things are turning interesting...

https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3020151019538/DE

A German company today just filed for a trademark on "Makerspace". I
don't think it's a coincidence that they did this a couple days after
Make tried to claim the term as theirs. People see something up for
grabs and they want to say it's theirs.

They're more of an incubator than a makerspace, just using the term
because it's popular. It's not a grassroots space, it's aggressively
funded by the Tech University in Munich.

Someone got a hold of them and they half-backpeddled and blamed their
lawyers for using too strong of language, same as Make did when
concerns were raised:

"We are currently (as we speak) working on the exact wording (Press
Release Ready) to explain exactly what I said on the telephone this
morning.

If all parties to this email can wait (latest) until close of business
I will gladly provide you with our written answer.
Which will say exactly what I said on phone – but in proper German.

Main point is – we have NO intentions of taking over or taking away
any of the Maker Spaces Open Platform / Community attributes.

Thanks for your patience"

... difference being Make hasn't got a trademark (yet) and possibly
hasn't even filed, where as this space actually filed for one.

Will be interesting to see what becomes of this and where the rest of us end up.