{"id":22509,"date":"2015-10-16T13:17:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T13:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/?p=22509"},"modified":"2015-10-16T13:17:15","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T13:17:15","slug":"opening-a-dialogue-on-trademark-safe-harbors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/opening-a-dialogue-on-trademark-safe-harbors","title":{"rendered":"Opening a Dialogue on Trademark Safe Harbors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today Shapeways is proud to join with our colleagues at\u00a0Etsy<\/a>, Foursquare<\/a>, Kickstarter<\/a>, and Meetup<\/a> in urging<\/a> the White House to begin exploring the possibility of an online safe harbor for trademarks.\u00a0 We believe that a statutory safe harbor for trademark use online would increase the free flow of information online and empower individuals to push back against abusive uses of trademark.\u00a0 If you read these last two sentences as \u201cwords words words\u201d but are still curious what those words mean, let me take a moment to explain what we are talking about.<\/p>\n

The United States has what is known as a safe harbor for websites that allow other people to post content to them (that includes all of the sites mentioned above, and a huge number of sites in the world).\u00a0 As a general rule, users – not websites – are liable when a user posts things that infringe on the copyright of others.\u00a0 Without this protection websites would have to individually screen every single post, model, photo, and comment for a copyright conflict before posting them.\u00a0 In practice, that would mean that there would be a lot fewer sites that allow others to post content online.<\/p>\n

One of the conditions of this safe harbor protection is that when a website operator is informed by a rightsholder that something uploaded to the site is infringing, that website operator takes down the allegedly infringing content.\u00a0 Because this process is governed by a law called the\u00a0 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (shortened as the DMCA), these kinds of takedown requests are sometimes known as \u201cDMCA takedowns.\u201d\u00a0 (This epic tale of Eulice and Abbas<\/a> explains how we handle these types of requests at Shapeways.)<\/p>\n

One important feature of this safe harbor system is that, in addition to giving rightsholders the ability to request content be taken down from a website, it also gives the original uploader the ability to request that the content go back up<\/span>. This ability to push back against takedown requests provides a critical check against abuse of the takedown process.<\/p>\n

The safe harbors are critical to the ability of users to push back against abusive takedown requests.\u00a0 Since the website is protected from liability, a user does not need to convince the website that it is worth it for the website to go to court in order to challenge a takedown. \u00a0Instead, the website can get out of a user\u2019s way and let the user challenge the takedown request if the user decides that it is worth challenging.<\/p>\n

Similar safe harbor systems exist for things like accusations of defamation.\u00a0 By pulling the website out of the equation, it is up to users to decide if a conflict is worth pursuing.\u00a0 Even if a website doesn\u2019t want to risk its entire business on a dispute, the person who stands accused is empowered to fight for rights she feels are important. \u00a0On balance, this makes the internet a richer place.<\/p>\n

Currently, these types of formal statutory safe harbor protections do not exist for \u00a0trademark disputes.\u00a0 The result is that there are many fewer checks on trademark owners who might want to exceed their rights and suppress a user.\u00a0 In practice, a user who wants to challenge an accusation of trademark infringement and have their content re-posted must convince the website that re-posting the content is worth going to court over.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, that can be a hard argument to make.<\/p>\n

The filing today<\/a> is designed to highlight this problem for policymakers.\u00a0 It is the first step in what will inevitably be a long process towards finding a solution that works for trademark holders and users.\u00a0 We\u2019ll keep you updated as it evolves.\u00a0 In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments we\u2019d love to see them below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today Shapeways is proud to join with our colleagues at\u00a0Etsy, Foursquare, Kickstarter, and Meetup in urging the White House to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":22552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[477],"class_list":["post-22509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-1-whats-hot"],"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/JointIPECcomment_finalcover-625x627.jpg","yoast_head":"\nOpening a Dialogue on Trademark Safe Harbors - Shapeways Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today Shapeways is proud to join with our colleagues at\u00a0Etsy, Foursquare, Kickstarter, and Meetup in urging the White House to begin exploring the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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