Phil Deakins has announced on the official forums that his low prim furniture store, Prim Savers, is rebranding itself as Prim Misers. Why is this of any particular interest you may ask, well it’s a cautionary tale and one that appears to be laced with disagreement, deceit and downright spitefulness. Phil has rebranded his store not because of any sort of attempt to reinvent his brand, it appears to be more of a case of his brand being in dispute with another brand and someone else being more determined to gain the legal right to use the name.
Our tale starts on a forum thread back in January 2010 where Phil explains:
“As most people here know, I’ve been trading in SL as “Prim Savers” for a long time – in the low prim furniture field. Two months ago a new low prim furniture store opened up as “PrimSavers” (no space between the words). The owner claims that it’s a different business name and I disagree. Anyone got any thoughts? ”
Well it seems a legitimate question and I know people whom have been in this dual brand situation, someone who rents from me found that she had chose someone else’s brand and she changed hers rather than argue the toss. However in the world of low prim furniture it seems people are not so nice, enter Floyd Mistwalker into the thread:
“Now about semantics.
I do believe PrimSavers and Prim Savers are two different names. Are they similar, sure, but technically they are different. One could even create “Prim Savers Inc.” and be different than “Prim Savers”. Or “Prim Savers Co.”. There are countless such examples in real world. However, that is not something I planned for, it would have been very easy to find a different name at the time. And that name could be completely new, or could be again, who knows, close to one a different company has. SL is a huge world, and there is no such thing as “Business Registry” or anything similar that one would access first and be advised on valid available names. That might be a good idea, imho.
I am completely open to discuss this, personally I don’t see myself in the wrong.
Also, please feel free to look up both stores, I don’t try to pretend I’m him, he creates items mostly from regular prims, I sculpt my own creations personally torturing each prim to give real PrimSavings to my customers. The stores are very different as products, even though by nature, we share the same niche.”
Now this sounds very reasonable, Floyd didn’t know about Phil’s brand, he also accidentally had the term “Prim Savers” with the space in some of his prims, he felt that Prim Savers and Primsavers were different enough to not change his brand, he makes a very good point about the lack of a business registry and digs his heels in. They’re both in the furniture market but their items will look different to anyone familair with the wares of each merchant. The thread, which is an epic one, descends into a discussion about trademarks and whether they’re that important.
So we fast forward to today and Phil’s announcement, now Phil has been downsizing for a while and is waiting for his store to close down when sales eventually dry up, so he didn’t chase up suggestions about looking into trademarking, however he announces:
“Following a number of public discussions, he decided to apply for a trademark on PrimSavers and, for good measure, he included Prim Savers. As soon as he applied for the mark, he naively asked LL to stop me using my business name but, of course, LL wouldn’t do that because he’d only applied for the mark – he didn’t have it. I could have prevented him from getting it due to my proveable prior use, but for a long time I’ve been allowing the business to fade – my intention is to close it completely when it’s no longer making worthwhile RL money (it’s taking a very long time to fade to that extent) – so I chose not to spend the money it would have cost.
The mark has now been granted and he again asked LL to stop me using the business name, “Prim Savers”, that I’ve been using since 2007, and I have no choice but to comply. So, as of May 12th 2011, the widely known “Prim Savers” is trading in SL as “Prim Misers”. ”
This is where it all gets a bit murky, why on earth would Phil not be able to use his brand of Prim Savers, when Floyd insisted Primsavers without the space was not a problem? I asked Phil this very question in the thread to which he replied:
“He added “Prim Savers” (with the space) as secondary to his trademark application, perhaps out of nastiness but, more likely, because he knew the truth about what everyone told him. I knew that he’d added it from the start – LL emailed me about it and provided the URL to the application. I can’t fault LL with regards to this. ”
Now I don’t have the documentation, Phil has seen that, but why would Prim Savers be a problem now, unless it has been done out of spite? Phil acknowledges that Linden Lab aren’t to blame and in both the original thread and the new thread people have told Phil he should have applied for the Trademark himself, by not doing so he has probably lost any recourse and with his plans to downgrade, he doesn’t have the fight in him, so yes, this is partially Phil’s own fault but it still begs the question, if Primsavers thought there was nothing wrong with their name without the space, why should it be an issue now?
I doubt we’ll see an answer from Primsavers, but it really shouldn’t have came to this.