Logo Infringement

["Warren Price" <warren16v@hotmail.com>]

Having thought about this logo infringment situation over night, I have come 
to the same conclusion I did when I fired off my first e-mail moments after 
I learned of the e-mail from VWoA to Dirk.  Clearly, intellectual property 
is valuable and should be protected.  There is no reason to exepect 
Volkwagen to ignore copyright infringements.  On the other hand, there is 
very little reason to believe that use of the VW logo, by a VW enthusiast, 
on his personal website (in Germany) sets into motion a domino effect that 
threatens all trademarked and copyrighted material everywhere.  One could 
argue that if VW allows one site to infringe, then everyone can infringe.  
One could argue that this type of infringment, though minor, would eat away 
at the very foundation of intellectual property law, if left unchecked.  One 
could argue that VW can't possibly police all of the personal websites, 
e-mail lists or written materials produced by enthusiasts across the globe 
to insure these materials are a positive reflection of VW's trademark.  The 
strongest argument can probably be found in the idea that when one sees the 
VW logo, one assumes, "This is Volkswagen" and certainly Volkswagen doesn't 
want any confusion.  The question here is not whether VW HAS the right to do 
a thing, it is whether they ARE right to do a thing.  Here, it is the level 
of risk to VW.  Frankly, the risk of damage to the VW image is minimal 
despite the strong arguments in their favor.  More distressing though is 
that VW never analysed the risk to their coveted trademark.  I doubt there 
was any evaluation of the website at all.  Someone at VWoA noticed the logo 
and without the least bit of thought called an attorney in Rochester.  End 
of story for VW.  To me, this is the injustice.  VW's trademark provides 
them with an identity and an image.  IP law enables them to protect that 
identity and image.  Even so, somewhere, VW has missed the point.  VW's 
success is not in a trademark.  Their success can be found in the affordable 
and high quality product they consistently produce.  It is not the trademark 
that enables VW to produce this product profitably, it is you and I, the 
consumer.  Someone at VW forgot this fact when they noticed their trademark 
on some guy's web site in Germany.  Someone at VW failed to do what most of 
our parents began teaching us to do before we could walk with any degree of 
skill....be considerate of people.  Someone at VW needed to send an e-mail, 
or a letter, or place a phone call that said, "Thankyou for supporting our 
product", or "We appreciate your enthusiasm for VW", but....  and then list 
some of their concerns and finally ask the guy to remove it.  This needed to 
be done before some lawyer in Rochester was ever called.  VW's approach says 
to me, "We don't give a damn.  We are not concerned with why you use our 
logo, we are not concerned with who you are, and we are not concered with 
where you are.  You are an infringement of our intellectual property rights 
and nothing more."  This e-mail to Dirk tells me that I am one of two things 
to volkwagen; a puchaser and therefore profit or a liability and therefore a 
potential loss.  Maybe this is how all large corporations look at consumers. 
  So be it.  All I know, is the small company that I work for cannot afford 
to look at people in this way.  I know that I cannot afford to look at 
people in this way.  Perhaps VW and other large companies can afford to sort 
people into one of two categories.  This is probably the case, but even so, 
if I am made aware of it, if I see it first hand as I have in this case, 
then I will not purchase their product.  So, I will send VW a letter and I 
will hope for a response.  Perhaps it will change my mind.  But if the 
response is similar in nature to the message sent to Dirk, then they will 
have lost a customer.  The fact that other car manufacturers might operate 
in the same way is of little consequence to me.  It is probable that 
someday, some other manufacturer will piss me off and I won't buy their 
product.  In the meantime, I hope that VW responds to my letter.  I would be 
satisfied even with a form letter response, as long as someone at VW who 
wrote that form letter thought about the recipient enough to merely say, 
"thank you".  Thank you for your comments, for your bitching, for buying our 
product.  Thank you for being a consumer of our product, because even if you 
are a pissed off consumer at the moment, your support, in part, makes us the 
company we are today.  In other words, we at VW have to protect our 
trademark.  Thank you consumer for contributing to what that trademark 
represents.

PLEASE NOTE:  With that, I promise to drop this subject and get off my soap 
box.  Sorry.

Warren Price

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