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Adobe Goes After FreshAIRApps For “AIR” Usage
Adobe AIR is a platform that can be utilized to create rich desktop applications. Twhirl and AlertThingy are two recent examples of applications built on AIR.
freshAIRApps is a community resource that offers a directory of AIR applications, news, resources along with developer tutorials. Corvida posted a review of the service on Readwriteweb and noted, "FreshAIRApps is poised to be the premier directory for all your Adobe AIR needs by providing a haven for users and developers to mingle together."
Apparently Adobe is now going after anyone who uses the word "air" in a domain name that has content related to the Adobe AIR platform. freshAIRApps creator James Whittaker noted today:
I have recently been informed that Adobe systems believe that this website and it’s domain name are in infringement of their trademarks. This is because I am using the word AIR in the domain name freshAIRapps.com. Adobe seem to think that they own the trademark of AIR and that I can’t use it and should hand the domain over to them and stop the website. After reading through the list of Adobe trademarks they only reference Adobe AIR and not AIR. I have been in communication with members of the Adobe evangelist team who truly believe that I am helping the community and promoting the use of the AIR runtime and subsequent applications built on the platform. I started this site because I have a genuine interest in AIR and other Adobe technologies.
James concludes by saying that, "Adobe has let me and the community down by trying to block sites that appear to challenge their marketplace, even though none of the apps featured on this site are hosted by me." If James properly redirects the domain, the change should be semi-transparent.
We will try to get some comments from Adobe AIR evangelist Ryan Stewart today. Going forward, freshAIRApps will now be known as RefreshingApps.
This seems so stupid to me.
1) Trademarking air seems like a ridiculous concept.
2) Why would you do this to the people that are essentially evangelizing your product for you?
adobe should be ashamed of themselves
Someone needs to teach Adobe’s legal department on how trademark law works. This is a pretty clear case where a nominative use defense should be successful. The trademark is only being used to refer to something else (which cannot be referred to in any other way): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use
A nominative use defense should be successful in this case because the site is set up to profile AIR apps (and not those from competing frameworks). How else can you refer to AIR apps without using the word AIR?
Terms like “Ruby”, “Python”, “Photoshop” and the like are all trademarked, yet there are many sites that use these words in their name. This is because they’re nominative usages and not infringements. That should be the case here too.
Adobe is being really stupid in this situation. Doesn’t Apple do the same thing? That’s the most backwards thing in the world. This is free publicity for them. It’s not like they’re selling AIR products and making the name theirs. They’re selling the AIR brand for Adobe.
*.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_(band)
so the band Air owns Air - and here I thought we all had an ownership right to air
What about AIR-Austin - is Adobe going after them next? http://www.knowbility.org/air-austin/ They’ve been around for more than 10 years.
According to this page http://www.knowbility.org/air-austin/?content=sponsor Adobe is one of their sponsors.
“Adobe has let me and the community down”
True.
Don’t really know about the legalities but the concept of ripping someone who’s promoting your stuff for free (almost) sounds like a prime opportunity to get bad PR…
And BTW- do domain name matter so much in this day of Googling (unless adobe have a copyright/trademark on meta-tags etc.)?
Site owners shouldn’t be so quick to comply with threatning letters, especially if they believe the claim is invalid. Just because someone sends you a letter demanding you to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. I think lawyers are just often over enthusiastic about sending these things out without really thinking about the best interests of the company.
Hi Allen, do you have a source link? I didn’t see anything at the top level in James’ blog.
I’ll pursue it on my end, but I need to trace the story back, find what actually happened. Where’s your source info? Thanks.
jd/adobe
Never mind, I found that your quoted material and source info appeared on the affected page itself:
http://freshairapps.com/
It sounds like he’s already pursuing it out-of-public-eye with other Adobe staffers, so I’ll let them work through it.
Generally Legal departments have to be prepared for any contingency, so they often do look at product names used in new domains. Lawyers rarely read weblogs, and so are often surprised at the effect an abrupt communication style has in public forums.
Sounds like it’s already being worked through back-channel… let’s let that communication continue.
(For what it’s worth, I’m not keen on application-aggregation sites in general… I’d rather download an app from the creator directly. But I know other people feel otherwise.)
tx, jd/adobe
How UTTERLY ridiculous! I had got hold of podcastair.com to promote a podcasting tool built on AIR.
Now, I won’t bother. At all.
Anyone would think they were trying to get in to bed with Apple.
Thanks John! As for your last comment, I think application aggregators are great as they give more visibility to the app creators but like you I’d always prefer to actually download the files directly.
Hey all,
Everyone I talk to at Adobe is a huge fan of FreshAIRApps.com. Whenever anyone asks me where they can find AIR apps I send them there and to our marketplace. I love the layout and how James reviews applications. What this shouldn’t be seen as is any attempt at shutting James down because he “competes” with our Marketplace. Unfortunately, as a company, we have to protect our trademark or else we lose it.
I think James is talking to the correct people so that this can have some kind of happier ending than it does now. I know it seems completely crazy that we would shut down a site like James’ that does so much good for AIR, but trademarks have to be protected.
I have a few questions about the specifics that I’m trying to figure out, but as I said, hopefully Adobe and James can be happy with the whatever resolution there is.
=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.com
Looks like Adobe will have to go after NPR next:)
http://www.freshair.com/
I apologize in advance for the length of this response but I have a very relevant experience to share.
When I read about this, it was a case of deja vu as I dealt with this same issue last year but in a bit more dramatic fashion.
I became enamored with AIR when it was still called Apollo. I had been struggling for years trying to bring a desktop component to my web apps with Java, WebDAV, and other technologies and AIR (Apollo) was a savior for me particularly because I’ve been working with Flash since 1998.
I got the idea to build a community to promote Apollo and showcase what you could do with it via an application gallery and there were a number of other features too centered around building community for AIR developers including free CVS code sharing repositories, free FTP servers, and even free Flash Media Server usage for people uploading AIR applications to the application gallery. This community was named ApolloApps.com.
I changed the name of the site from ApolloApps.com to AIRApps.net the very day that Adobe announced the new name for the product on June 11, 2007.
I also developed another idea which was to implement an E-Commerce Framework for AIR developers that would enable them to add an e-commerce component to their AIR applications and I brought this plan to execution.
I signed up to be a sponsor at the MAX Conference where the sponsorship levels START at $15,000 US. I had collateral produced in the form of T-Shirts, etc. and was looking forward to making some good things happen.
Less than 10 days before the Conference, I was thrown into a dialogue with Adobe’s Legal Team and it was indicated that I would need to change the name of my project.
They generously allowed me 30 days to do this but I had to advertise at MAX that I would be changing the name of the project.
So - I got this idea (and those who attended MAX last year may vaguely remember this) to hold a contest to help choose a new name for the project and the name O2Apps.com was arrived upon and the winner was awarded a MacBook Pro for his creativity.
I continued the O2Apps.com project for a little while, though the site is now largely just sitting idle with some legacy resources. The experiences articulated here largely deflated my enthusiasm for evangelizing AIR. My main company however, Ucompass.com, Inc., is building its next generation E-Learning application with Flex and AIR so I am still a strong supporter of the technology.
While I lost a lot of money on the AIRApps/O2Apps project, I had a lot of fun, I met a lot of great people, and actually have hired some people who I met through the site to help with my core Flex/AIR development project.
In conclusion, I do recognize the need to protect trademarks, but I think there probably are more creative and constructive ways to go about it. I will add that, ironically, while I was dealing with this issue, a legal representative from Adobe actually suggested the name “Ed’s AIR Apps” so if that was apparently an acceptable name (as it didn’t lead with the word AIR) I don’t really know why Fresh AIR Apps causes them problems.
Also - as an interesting aside here, the person from Adobe who seemed to be the primary catalyst in sounding the alarm to the Adobe Legal Department also happened to be, from what I understood anyway, the same person who was spearheading Adobe’s AIR Marketplace. For a good while, AIRApps.net had 120+ applications while the AIR Marketplace was in the single digits for quite some time.
Infer from that what you will.
Where does Adobe draw the line when it comes to seeing product names in domain names? Do a search for Flex, Coldfusion, Flash, etc. and you’ll come up with a bunch of personal blogs, showcases, and tutorial sites, yet those have been up for years, some even after Adobe bought Macromedia.
If Adobe goes after Freshairapps, then it should go after all sites that include any of their trademarks - that’s the only fair thing to do. Why do some get a pass and not others? Now granted, we don’t know if Adobe has and the domain owner has a license from Adobe to use it, but the majority that exist probably don’t.
It seems to me that if you have a domain with their trademark in it, and you generally talk about THAT product (or any of their products), then you’re in trouble.
I could possibly see how the AIR in Freshairapps looks like the AIR logo and maybe that’s why. But what if it was just called Freshair.com (for example), and you discussed the AIR platform, would that be a case for trademark infringement? What if I was a FlashGuru and discussed Flash?
Now, I know you have to defend your trademarks. I see that and understand it. Yet, what makes this case different then all the other domains? What is the benchmark? If you go after one - go after them all.
I think having an explicit explanation as to why Freshairapps was targeted would put a lot of this discussion to rest. Adobe is scaring the marketplace.