[asterisk-biz] Digium enforcing its trademarks

[Garrett Smith]

Kevin:

We got ads booted for having Asterisk in the copy.

What I find the most humorous about this that if you resell Digium PCI cards, like VoIP Supply does and you advertise that Digium PCI card on Google via Adwords, you can't put "works with Asterisk" in the ad copy for that product as the Google filters will boot the ad.

Maybe Digium want us resellers to substitute "Asterisk" with "trixbox" or one of the other open source telephony platforms. 

I have no problems with companies protecting their trademarks, but when you have been selling millions of dollars per year of a companies products for over three years, you would figure that company would at least be proactive and tell you that they are going to be doing this (or add you to the safe list).

The first time you hear of the policy change shouldn't be when Google's send you an email stating that ads had been denied...and I am still waiting on the "authorization" I asked for on Monday. 

Garrett Smith
 

716-250-3408 OFFICE
716-630-1548 FAX
716-903-9495 MOBILE
gsmith at voipsupply.com 

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-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-biz-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Kevin P. Fleming
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 6:44 PM
To: Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Digium enforcing its trademarks

Brian West wrote:

> You shouldn't have to contact Digium for such use cases as "Asterisk  
> Compatible" or "Works with Asterisk".

The issue is *not* the use of the trademarks within the ad copy itself
(as you rightly point out), it is the purchase of search
results/listings for those trademarks via the AdWords process. As far as
I'm aware, it's perfectly acceptable to have an ad that says "Our
products are compatible with Asterisk" or "Our products are based on
Asterisk" or similar copy, but purchasing 'Asterisk' or 'Digium' as a
keyword to get those ads to show up in searches is not allowed unless
Digium has authorized you to do so.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Director of Software Technologies
Digium, Inc. - "The Genuine Asterisk Experience" (TM)

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