I consider myself a reasonable fair person. In fact one of my biggest bug bears relates to fairness. Treat people fairly & typically I have learnt you get a lot in return. Some may say I’m a soft touch & maybe not hard enough, but I care little, if I can sleep at night, and then I am happy. So it saddens me to actually have to write this blog post. It relates to the fact that Autodesk Legal are now after the domain name of Revitforum.
http://www.revitforum.org/out-there/12753-revitforum-org-domain.html
As many of you know, I am passionate about the Revit technology. I have built my career & to some extent my reputation, for what that’s worth, on the use of Revit & the ability to share this passion with many others. The technology excites me, I live it, I breath it; am I best Revit user out there? No way! But I have helped write books, helped setup User groups, the list is endless. I would reckon I have given away more than I have got in return. But once again, I care little as I can sleep at night in the knowledge that my passion for this technology has somehow rubbed off on others. So to now hear that Autodesk Legal are now targeting a forum which has been setup to share the knowledge with others because it uses the word “Revit” in the domain is beyond comprehension. Trust me, I understand why Autodesk want to protect the Revit brand name, but this is beyond a joke. Now if you look at say Apple, there are hundreds of blogs & websites that use the word Apple & Mac; I don’t see Apple rushing around to steal back those domain names. When are Autodesk Legal going to recognise that sites like the Revitforum provide a quality service to its members through the use of knowledge sharing. I would even say that somebody needs to actually explain to the said Legal department, that the AEC industry now considers Revit as the tool of choice for delivering Building Information Models. Fundamental to BIM is a process which requires collaboration & knowledge sharing; that’s not me saying this, but industry thought leaders like Patrick McCleamy & many others who will remain nameless. So this Legal team wants to then target an industry which is trying to move forward & make a change by being disruptive just to protect the a name. If you actually stand back & think about this, its total madness. SO instead alienate the customer base who are actually your best spokespeople, just because of a five letter word. Whatever next? Lets hope some senior figure within the big A looks at this & recognises how “silly” this actually is.
8 comments :
It's probably unfortunate that the request came from the Legal Team on contract with Autodesk. I would be willing to bet that if the request had come from any number of Autodesk employees that frequent the RFO forums there would've been less of a fuss. That thread did blow up pretty quick.
There are 385 domain names on sedo.com containing the word revit, most of them do not belong to Autodesk... You are not alone and it would be unfair if you were the only one targeted.
You are right, this is ridiculous, and totally counterproductive. Are they going to start chasing people with Revit in their blog names next? Or even blog postings with Revit as a keyword?
The whole point of putting the word Revit into a blog or forum name is so that people know what the subject matter is.
David -
I couldn't agree more with this blasphemy if Autodesk actually pursues this effort. Maybe there would be fewer forums if they actually provided a better functioning product. The fact of the matter is that 99% of these blogs are the consumers proving essentially free product support for Autodesk. They should recognize that we are only increasing the use of the product in a way that the software companies do not have the resources to provide. Even Carl Bass stood before us at an RTC event two years ago and told us that they are now relying on YouTube and Google for their primary help mechanisms, even before the WikiHelp. Let’s see if they come to their senses…
-Doug Williams
I could see the point if the domain name was http://revit.org but not RevitForum, RevitClub, etc.
However, Autodesk should have every right to require any person or group using a derivative of their trade marked name to make it unequivocally clear that there's no official affiliation.
After all, one of the main purposes of defending your copyrights is to avoid public confusion as to the sources.
Warm regards from Los Angeles,
Emmanuel
I could see the point if the domain name was http://revit.org but not RevitForum, RevitClub, etc.
However, Autodesk should have every right to require any person or group using a derivative of their trade marked name to make it unequivocally clear that there's no official affiliation.
After all, one of the main purposes of defending your copyrights is to avoid public confusion as to the sources.
Warm regards from Los Angeles,
Emmanuel
I could see Autodesk's point if the domain name was http://revit.org but not RevitForum, RevitClub, etc.
However, Autodesk should have every right to require any person or group using a derivative of their trade marked name to make it unequivocally clear that there's no official affiliation.
After all, one of the main purposes of defending your copyrights and trademarks is to avoid public confusion as to the sources.
Warm regards from Los Angeles,
Emmanuel
This blog post inspired an interesting LinkedIn discussion: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Biting-blogs-that-feed-them-98421.S.216120456?qid=3553aab4-1739-4295-b60f-554e9be0f22a&trk=group_most_popular-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmp_98421
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