![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heidiIf you have a CafePress store, you need to read this - and please feel free to spread the information (you can use what I wrote here, word for word) as wide as you wish, to any fandoms, although a lot of what I have to say deals specifically with WB.
Cafe Press now has a Browse By Item feature on the front page of their site. This means that their search engine now looks beyond your description of your site, to see the "names" for each of the products in your Cafe Press store.
What does this mean for those of us with HP-themed sites?
It means that while before, WB wasn't able to see if you used, say, "Draco Malfoy" or "Quidditch" in one of your product descriptions, WB wouldn't know that from the general CP search engine.
Now, however, if WB does a search for, say, QUIDDITCH, a tonne of individual items show up on the list, which might irk the people at WB whose job it is to go after trademark infringers.
It sounds, at this point, like WB is planning to give it about a month so people can remove any trademarks from their descriptions (and, of course, you shouldn't've been using anything copyrighted by WB or JKR in the first place), so this is my moment to recommend that if you have stuff in CafePress that includes things like "Quidditch" or "Hogwarts" or full character names - remove them, even if you're using them in a descriptive and not a trademark sense. First names, or last names, or words that are just words, like Accio or Lumos are fine, but if you have a product that says "SIRIUS IS NOT DEAD" and the description is "Sirius Black Did Not Die!" - my recommendation (although I'm not giving legal advice here) is to remove the word "Black" from that.
I can't be sure, though, if other media producers will have the same feeling about this sort of thing as WB does, but hopefully they will be understanding and realise that CP gave *nobody* a tonne of notice about this - they did a beta announcement about it on the GreatGear Yahoogroup two days ago, but they didn't give any warning to storekeepers at all.
Le sigh.
Now, let me just wonder - WHY did CP have to do this a month before the movie?
Cafe Press now has a Browse By Item feature on the front page of their site. This means that their search engine now looks beyond your description of your site, to see the "names" for each of the products in your Cafe Press store.
What does this mean for those of us with HP-themed sites?
It means that while before, WB wasn't able to see if you used, say, "Draco Malfoy" or "Quidditch" in one of your product descriptions, WB wouldn't know that from the general CP search engine.
Now, however, if WB does a search for, say, QUIDDITCH, a tonne of individual items show up on the list, which might irk the people at WB whose job it is to go after trademark infringers.
It sounds, at this point, like WB is planning to give it about a month so people can remove any trademarks from their descriptions (and, of course, you shouldn't've been using anything copyrighted by WB or JKR in the first place), so this is my moment to recommend that if you have stuff in CafePress that includes things like "Quidditch" or "Hogwarts" or full character names - remove them, even if you're using them in a descriptive and not a trademark sense. First names, or last names, or words that are just words, like Accio or Lumos are fine, but if you have a product that says "SIRIUS IS NOT DEAD" and the description is "Sirius Black Did Not Die!" - my recommendation (although I'm not giving legal advice here) is to remove the word "Black" from that.
I can't be sure, though, if other media producers will have the same feeling about this sort of thing as WB does, but hopefully they will be understanding and realise that CP gave *nobody* a tonne of notice about this - they did a beta announcement about it on the GreatGear Yahoogroup two days ago, but they didn't give any warning to storekeepers at all.
Le sigh.
Now, let me just wonder - WHY did CP have to do this a month before the movie?
