Loading ...The online community has been in an uproar since the news that someone is in the process of obtaining a trademark for the term “SEO.” Jason Gambert of Modern Consulting Solutions has gained approval from the Trademark Office and is now moving toward publication. WebProNews Reporter Abby Prince talked with Sarah Bird, Esquire, of SEOmoz, Inc., who happened upon the news as she was working on trademarks for SEOmoz.
Find out the latest in the case including Gambert’s response to the community and how you can file a Notice of Opposition, right here on WebProNews.
Different connotation of SEO? Jason Gambert is a complete moron. I would like to meet him in the ring…Everybody in the SEO community…file “notice of opposition”.
why seo Become a Trademark?
Sorry, Bad link before http://www.digital-trademarks.com/ is the proper address, admin, please delete the prior comment. The statement is, perhaps this attorney can shed light on this to see how applicable and liable the trademark application is. He deals specifically with many similar matters and is truly an expert in this field. The attorneys name is Marc Harris, if anyone could find a solution, I would put my money on him.
Of course, if he gets the trademark, we could retaliate. If a few thousand of us get together and pounce on every SEO project he has, we could blow him out of the water.
I’m sure I won’t be the only SEO pissed about this.
This article is just link bait for dumb SEO’s.
Cant believe any self respecting webmaster would buy that this is a true article.
The site http://modernconsultingsolutions.com/ by “Jason Gambert” is possibly one of the most unfriendly sites for search engines & users that I have ever seen. (no self respecting webmaster would believe that this was an actual company)
It all looks cooked up to me, if this were a founded article, it would site resources or other articles.
Nice try….
Sorry about all the self respecting, but this pages ad’s get in the way a bit.
What a load of bullshit. why would they want to trademark the term SEO?
I will be the first one plus many other will join in to retaliate.
True article?
Right… We completely made the whole thing up…
There aren’t discussions about it on SEOmoz, SearchEngineWatch, MarketingPilgrim, SEORoundtable, or Sphinn…
And it so completely wasn’t really filed.
Right. It’s all just a big joke.
You all can not see the light, he is not trying to do anything but good. He is trying to alleviate all the bad wraps the industry has been getting form cons etc. I am sure the guy that says, “I would like to meet him in the ring” has his fists for the solutions. It is no suprise why we have such a bad name. People like, Haters, Con men, Snake oil salesman, Used car salesman, Rappers now, etc have been doing it. Just look at your comments, executives don’t sound like this….
I am for him, at least he has the courage to do somethning before the GOVT. does…
http://www.jasongambert.com
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ArteWorks SEO has retained legal counsel as of today, and we will be filing a notice of opposition. One thing I am going to ask our counsel is whether or not damages can be collected from this guy for a bad faith trademark application. I can think of lots of theories…business torts for starters.
Then what happens if he proves “Prior use then punches your lights out?”
For the person that stated they think he is doing something good and is on his side is not looking at the whole picture. His claims is that he is standardizing a process basically because he states that there are people out there selling SEO and ripping people off.
The first thing that you have to realize is that it does not matter what industry you are in there will always be a scammer. Second if there truly needs to be a standard who say he has the right one. As for this statement “I am for him, at least he has the courage to do something before the GOVT. does…” there is no reason the government would even bother with this issue.
If you think about the big picture, if he was successful at trademarking SEO. He controls its use and there for any company using it will have to stop or pay for the right to use it. He stands to make a lot of money if successful.
My final comment is that if this guy truly wanted to come up with an industry standard then it would be better to form an organization of recognized industry experts that came up with a standard and then convince the rest of the industry to recognize that standard. There is already a model for this called CompTIA, in the 80′s a lot of individuals claimed to be computer experts and were not. Now you can get certified by CompTIA who has set standards for the computer industry and its board of directors are key people in the industry. Its not just on person setting standards for the rest of us.
Sounds like a PRO FINALLY!
My final comment is that if this guy truly wanted to come up with an industry standard then it would be better to form an organization of recognized industry experts that came up with a standard and then convince the rest of the industry to recognize that standard. There is already a model for this called CompTIA, in the 80’s a lot of individuals claimed to be computer experts and were not. Now you can get certified by CompTIA who has set standards for the computer industry and its board of directors are key people in the industry. Its not just on person setting standards for the rest of us.
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I hope this guy has some fight in him to extend the controversy. This should serve to galvanize the industry and help define the standards better.
This is a great publicity stunt because we all know who this guy is now whereas most of us didn’t even know he existed beforehand. I’m just sayin’ . . .
It is insane and probably will not get too far. There are still certain requirements for patents and such, and unless he can prove that his was the first firm to use and “coin” the term, if others of us retaliate he won’t have much of a case. It seems like from a legal stand point, he’ll have to prove that he was the first to use the term, and that it was not a term with common usage before he decided to file for a trademark (which we all know won’t fly over in a court). If a serious case comes out of this, it’s one of those that could prove law-changing!
I’ve viewed the site, and agree that it isn’t user-friendly or search engine friendly, which is quite ironic. I wouldn’t feel all that comforted as a potential client. To be honest, it looks half-done, is lacking real information such as how long the company has been in existence and you can tell that they’ve not taken the time to thoroughly design their site (some sections still have the generic labeling of the template, like “about read more 1″ when you click to read more about their company. There is basically no information about the site from alexa or even WayBack Machine (where you can view various statistics and designs of the site from the past). Their only news comes from 2007, which shows me that they are either not very active or were formed in late 2006 or early 2007, which is no where near the point when the term “SEO” was coined. It is not at all a modern or seo-friendly site. Very ironic, indeed.
My guess is that if this were to go to a court, he wouldn’t have much of a case if enough evidence was presented against his claims.
Furthermore, someone who is into SEO would be an expert on the benefits and uses of blogging. I have only been able to find the one blog from this guy (his personal website), and only from this month about this whole situation. How is it that a “pro” SEO consultant is not into blogging, not a member of any official organizations and unheard of until now? If he had in fact coined the term SEO, wouldn’t we be constantly throwing his name around with reference to the term or concept (or at least giving him credit)?
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nice post
SEO Best Tips Search Engine
Oouuu. What a good post!
Both sites of Gambert below have PR 0:
jasongambert .com
modernconsultingsolutions .com
How could he come up with the crazy idea
of filing a trademark for the term “seo”…
which he don’t even have any clue what is
seo?
This is a big slap to respected seo
communities and the webmasters alike.
It’s one thing to file for a Trademark, but if he was not the first person to use the term in commerce then he does not have the right to it and could very easily loose it in a lawsuit.
Funny how his site isn’t very SEO friendly (oops can I say that!)
As far as I understand Trademark Law it wouldn’t be unique enough to be used as plain text and so the Trademark would have to be a logo at least. The general rule of thumb is that you can’t tradmark verbs or nouns required in your market. However the Trademark office may not be aware of what an SEO is so someone should tell them!
Oh the irony of all of this!
This guys site is one of the most un SEOfriendly (new word I am trademarking) site on the web! If you have the SEO Quake tool bar installed check out his score … ZERO!
He’ll have a fight in his hands that’s for sure. And shame on the Trademark office for even re-thinking the application based on his convoluted logic.
The Guys a Joke – its just a lin-kbait attempt to get his name out there and try and get some link juice to his site – it appears to be working.
The fact that his site is ass makes it interesting, Why would he not have an SEO’d website? His sites (both of them) are terrible!
Cheeesy, I can’t believe it. This is really ridiculous. I am going to continue using the term SEO and I will post it everywhere. lol
I wonder how many times the term SEO has been used today. Can you believe the guy wants to own it…go figure.
It’s people like this who make the world a difficult place to be.
I think it’s interesting that the Internet community needs to ban together in opposition. If we do nothing then he might eventually get desired outcome.
Politics has a way of being found in everything.
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