Jun 21 2008
Will SEO Ever Be Trademarked?
Someone is trying to trademark SEO and it seems that he is winning the battle.
An enterprising internet marketer by the name of Jason Gambert is on his way to obtaining a trademark for search engine optimization . Whether his application will ever progress, we have to find out.
Sounds familiar….
Remember when someone tried to register a trademark for the term “cyberlaw”? Some lawyer wanted to apply intellectual property rights laws to prevent other lawyers and individuals from using the term in their publications. It was met with a lot of protests. Will Gambert’s case go through the same disdain? It certainly seems like it would.
Is this for real?
The idea of turning widely-used terms into exclusive intellectual properties may sound weird (even unethical), but that certainly does not stop people from doing it anyway. What is so interesting about this particular attempt is that Gambert managed to pass the Trademark Office’s preliminary review and is actually already in the publication stage. According to Sarah Bird, a lawyer who happened to chance upon the trademark application, Gambert is just a few steps away from claiming the rights to use SEO as a service mark. It’s a good thing that Bird and other lawyers managed to file notices of opposition before it was too late to do anything.
The outlook
For many internet marketers and SEO enthusiasts, the possibility that SEO will ever be trademarked is highly unlikely. First and foremost, the term has been in use for more than a decade now. Second, while Gambert claims to be exerting this extra effort for the noble cause of improving SEO services by creating standards governed by a single body, this somewhat far-fetched idea of trademarking the term ‘SEO’ hardly seems to contribute anything significant. Just the idea, in fact, of forming a ‘governing body’ for SEO is impossible to some people. For one, it’s going to be difficult to trust a single governing body to create standards that will benefit the whole community. It’s not as if the whole industry is already going down the drain a decade after it was officially formed. There are still reputable and credible SEO professionals that are known to uphold ethics in their work. Besides, a set of standards wouldn’t really deter shady SEO practitioners from scamming people out of their money.
Many people are convinced that Gambert is not really a ‘crusader’ out to ‘professionalize’ the SEO industry, and that he may be doing this for purely selfish reasons.
What do you think?
