Thursday, November 12, 2009

Man*ged *dentity Serv*ces, Trademarked!

I received the following email today from our friends at Fischer:

http://identityman.blogspot.com/2009/01/another-entry-into-idm-managed-services.html

Dear Ashraf Motiwala,

We note that one of your recent articles used the phrase "Managed Identity Services" This phrase is a trademark owned by our company and is also the subject of a U.S. trademark application examined and approved by the U.S. Trademark Office. When you use the phrase in your articles, please place the "R" superscript after the trademark, and please make a reference in your articles that "Managed Identity Service®" is a trademark owned by Fischer International Identity, LLC. In addition, you should use the trademark as an adjective, not as a noun. These steps will help us continue to protect our trademark rights and also allow you to properly refer to it in your various articles.

Thank you for your support and proper usage of our trademarks. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

I see. It's all about trademarks (and grammar). For some reason, I thought it was about innovation and making the (identity) world a better place.

Anyhow, I wonder if they are going after Citi, Arcot, Wipro, and IBM. Wait, they barked at my blog...so I also wonder if they also went after Ian Yip, Felix Gaehtgens, Matt Flynn, Nishant Kaushik and Jonathan Penn. Anyone else get an email? or should I feel honored that they are singling me out because of the 6 readers who read my blog?

C'mon Fischer, you guys should really let the trademark go. The term belongs to the industry. Remember, trademarks don't buy marketshare.