There’s been a lot of great discussion about Jose Avila’s FedExFurniture.com site. Perhaps you read about it here, or there or even way over there.
Thursday’s “citizen journalism” posting by Jeremy Pepper was a great job, as he talked/chatted both with FedEx PR and Mr. Avila. My hat off to him.
But, while this hopefully will die down, there are a couple important points I’d like to make:
1) Other than if Mr. Avila would’ve tried to profit from his site, would the site really have “result[ed] not only in confusion, but is likely to dilute through tarnishment and/or blurring, the FedEx mark.”? (Taken from a letter sent by FedEx lawyers.)
No. All Mr. Avila was doing was showing how much he likes FedEx, being creative until he could buy real furniture (per his first blog posting), and yes, getting his 15 minutes of fame.
Couldn’t FedEx have had some fun with it? Such as put together a video for Mr. Avila showing the sturdiness of the boxes, and maybe something like: FedEx, for when you are “Absolutely, Positively” in a furniture bind.
And, add a disclaimer about the boxes are not designed for furniture, and video is really a spoof.
Have fun. Create a good will between FedEx and Avila. Kind of like community relations, but via the ‘net.
2) Why do corporations respond with lawyers first in cases of trademark or other infringements?
Per Jeremy’s conversation with Sandra Munoz from FedEx corporate communications:
“I believe that the first contact with Jose Avila - the official contact - was through the attorney. If we go online and see a company using the FedEx name, it goes to legal. That’s not unusual. It’s a legal issue.”
Per Jeremy’s IM’ing with Mr. Avila, it seems like a civil, professional request to stop would have been sufficient.
“Jose Avila: The real issue here is that PR was never involved in the beginning….had they said something like change the domain name…change the colors…etc…on day 1, i would have probably bent over backwards to do such things. Instead being that i felt threatened, I started asking people for advice.”
It’s not tacky that “you attract more bees with honey than vinegar.”
Why don’t corporations first go with a civil, professional approach rather than calling out the lawyers? You can always take that as a second step, right?!
Whatever happened to good old common sense?
Anyway, I’m done with it (very likely), and hope it has a happy ending for all: Mr. Avila gets some real furniture, and FedEx keeps its image from being tarnished.
– Mike
