Friday, May 26, 2006

O'Reilly tries to trademark "Web 2.0"

So much to blog, so little time.

But this one was too sweet not to mention.

The blogosphere has been buzzing today about O'Reilly sending a cease-and-desist letter to IT@Cork, demanding (yes, that's the legal term) that they not use "Web 2.0" in the title of their conference.

Everything clever and poignant that could possibly be said about the subject has been done so in the comments of above link - so I'm just going to quote a few of my personal favorites:

"Let's pull that bug out of O'Reilly's ass, and start calling it Web 2.1 - the bug fix release ;-)"

"Now this is how you go about rubbing people the wrong way."

"I and a very few other bloggers had jumped to the conclusion that this must be CMP's blunder; surely Tim O'Reilly was too savvy to make such a mistake. You have proven us fools, and that we will not forget."

"This is typical O'Reilly, really. Greed. Makes him a hypocrite too... Shame on you Tim."

...and my all-time favorite:

"Hopefully you'll agree to change your name before we ask a judge to issue an injunction against you prior to the launching of next month's 'Sara Winge Is A Giant Hemorrhoid Conference.'"

In the interest of full disclosure (and unless you're not one of my regular, alert readers), I must mention that I used to work for O'Reilly from 1997 to 2001 (I got laid off 30 days after Sept. 11) in the function of their "Online Evangelist". My boss used to be none other than Sara Winge.

A WIRED article on Tim last year triggered a long-overdue top-popping by yours truly - detailed here - and so the only thing I really have to say about O'Reilly even attempting to register "Web 2.0" as a trademark is this:

Guys - for f***s sake. Pull your heads out of your asses, already. You didn't used to be so dumb and uncool when I was there. What the f*** happened?
posted by Simone at 10:42 AM | link | 4 comments