Will Jason Gambert get the trademark for the term “SEO”?
April 13, 2008
If Jason Gambert gets his trademark application approved, which I highly doubt will happen, the SEO world will definitely be in turmoil.
I cannot imagine that someone can be given that much power in a world where the free market decides.
Just to give you guys an idea of potential consequences, Jason would be able to cease and desist any domain name using the term “SEO”.
SEO Book and SEO Moz and many more would have to comply to the standards which he sees fit for the SEO industry.
No surprise that someone from Rand Fishkin’s corner is encouraging internet marketers to file a Notice of Opposition online.
Filing the notice costs $300.00
Jason has here published The Official Response to the Search Engine Marketing Community and we have asked him for an interview.
You can now discuss Search Feature News on our brandnew forums.
OK, now let me make a real quick prediction here:
Google and Microhoo will contact that guy and offer him legal and financial support in the matter. They will ask him to sign certain agreements and try to gain control over the SEO world or rather a big part of it. Then a few high-profile SEOs are going to come on board as well.
Can you see it happening?
Here is the official application from the U.S. Patent Office’s Website for the term “SEO”.
Please don’t give this tool any link-love!!! No-follow it or make it some vulgar anchortext…PLEASE…for standards sake.
It wouldn’t matter if the term “SEO” was trademarked for domains currently with “SEO” in it, like SEObook.com and many others - those wouldn’t go to court since they were registered well before the trademark was.
That specific issue has come up many times and simply put, the people before who had the term in it wouldn’t receive any problems with trademark infringement since they had the trademark technically registered online before it was even considered a trademark or copyright.
Being that said, I hope that SEO still doesn’t get trademarked, since it would definitely publicize the trademark for just being a common term among webmasters. >:o
<3EGS
I don’t understand how he can establish an SEO process for service providers. I agree that CPAs must understand and practice GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) but when preparing your books you’re not looking to outrank anyone. If everyone is held to the same practice and techniques, how then are we to be successful in providing SEO services to clients? SEO is like a game or a race, there is a “winenr” - it’s like saying every car racing in the Indy 500 has to drive at the same speed.