Something happened recently that really irks me.

WordPress is doing a disservice to the blogging community by singling out honest, legitimate businesses who create and sell training materials on how to best us your WordPress blogs.

What did they do? Not only did they send cease and desist letters, they also called such sites "scammy" and "snake oil businesses" simply because -- or so it seems -- they use salesletters to promote their wares.

There's more to the story than this. So please read my latest blog post for more:

The Michel Fortin Blog » Blog Archive » Is WordPress Making a Wrong Move?

My question is, what do you think?

This can be easily added to the thread on this board titled "Are long copy salesletters scams?" The point is, most scams do use salesletters. But not all salesletters are scams.

I'm a tad insulted. And their remarks seem to border on the libelous, which is going to hurt them if they're not careful...

Michael,

It's not that your friend runs a bad site with no value, it's that so many other people DO run scammy WP-related sites - I guess they are tired of it.

Here's a FREE sentence from my upcoming e-book, The Wealthy Bastard's Guide to Internet Marketing 101 :

"Registering a URL that contains a trademark, without the explicit permission AND the continuing good graces of the legal owner, is a time-bomb waiting to happen."

You can't use THEIR marketing / name / good reputation in your URL in order to profit off it, without their blessings. You have to come up with YOUR OWN brand.

I thought this was common knowledge in marketing circles, but in case you didn't know, here's good example of why you shouldn't do it.

You brought up a great point about "WordPerfect For Dummies" books - and how they use trademarked names in the title of their publication- but I think that with URL names the law tends to be more strict. An actual, printed book has all kinds of features give it a distinctive look and brand. You can look at it, examine it, see the colors and tell who published it at a glance. Many features set the Dummies book apart from "WordPerfect(tm) - The Official Owner's Manual."

On the 'net - your name is everything. It's all you have to stand on, all your customers will remember you by. Not your look, not your location, not your cover.

P.S.S.S.S.S.
I wish I could register some of the (lucrative!) trademark-containing URLs I have come up with. If I could put a blog up there and get away with it for the long-term, I'd be able to ride their brand power and use the SEO/keyword advantage for some serious buckage.

You can, actually, if you're willing to risk it and "know how".

What WordPress did is bound to happen sooner or later.

Wordpress is acting like a bunch of idiots here.

Sherman's product is great and only furthers the
use of Wordpress blogs.

Plus, it's the furthest thing in the world from being a
scam.

It's an honest product, and a good one too. I've promoted
it to various people myself.

I had this exact same thing happen to me with a poker domain
once.

However instead of bowing down to the cease and desist
letter of the poker company, I told them to "PISS OFF".

Then I told them to contact my lawyer and gave them a
name and phone number.

Funny thing is, I have no lawyer.

I made it up out of thin air, and emailed them a bluff. It
was just like poker, but via email.

Anyways, the company never tried to call the attorney. Instead
they emailed back and asked me how much I wanted for the
domain name.

The truth is, I didn't even want the domain name anymore because
it was impossible to get any search engine rankings going up against
this big company.

So I said $1600 and hit the send button.

I had no idea what was going to happen. I would of actually sold
the name for as little as $200 considering I didn't even want it
anymore.

Long story short....

The company sent me the $1600 within minutes and fell for the
bluff.

Way to go Moffatt.

A modern day David and Goliath story... I love it!

I definitely don't recommend this strategy as it could
of easily landed myself in a heap of trouble.

I just fired off emails in a fit of rage and got lucky
it worked.

Strategy??? LOL - sounds more like flying by the seat of your pantelones!

Yeah, When I was younger (way younger) I got pulled over by a police officer for running a red light. He was right on my tail all the way through the intersection.

When he pulled me over I just acted dumb...

he asked "why did you run the red light".

In a frantic search for an answer I stated, "it wasn't 'me' who ran the red light... YOU ran the red light... it was yellow when I entered the intersection".

Talk about sweating bullets... if it wasn't for that emergency call he got over the radio, my *ss would have been in a heap of trouble.

Talk about great timing!

A few years later I went into law enforcement... go figure.

Cease and desist what? WordPress is Open Source. There is NO WordPress™ or (since it's been around a few years) WordPress®. They have NO tradedress to make a stink about. (Naturally most lawyers wouldn't care as long as there was a check attached.)

That's why I said yesterday, if you're going to do any business, whether it's online or offline you have to form an entity in order to protect yourself against bottom sucking lawyers.

Hopefully the guy in your article didn't even bother acknowledging the e-mail or letter. If I was the guy with all the WordPress training videos I'd let WordPress take me to trial. Yeah, go ahead and sue me for what they think is some tradedress infringement.

WordPress is Open Source. Where are they going to get the money to sue anyone? My guess it would take 25k to 50k to bring this guy to trial. What about all the others?

JayKay, they do own the trademark. In fact, it's own by Automattic, Inc., the company owned by Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of WordPress.

I made this quickie comment today to clarify:

The Michel Fortin Blog » Blog Archive » Is WordPress Making a Wrong Move?

And don't forget those money-hungry litigation lotto players who hire those lawyers trying to hit the jackpot.

Too bad you're incognito ...I'd love to get similar lingo in a testimonial.

Regards,

-Mike