Digital Camera Review Taken Down By A Botched DMCA Notice That Makes Claims Of Trademark Infringement

Trademark

from the IP:-it's-all-so-much-peanut-butter-and-chocolate,-apparently dept

We’ve seen the DMCA takedown process abused to stifle criticism or remove unflattering content from the web. Knowing that, the first reaction to reading about a website being forced to remove a product review after being hit by a DMCA notice is to assume some overzealous representative of the affected company is simply using copyright’s powers for evil.

DigitalRev recently posted a review comparing GoPro’s Hero 3 camera with Sony’s HDR-AS15. Not long after that, a DMCA notice arrived from GoPro (or rather, its “brand representative”), demanding that the review be taken down. So far, so censorious. But the DMCA notice sent didn’t describe any sort of copyright violation. Instead, it headed off into a completely different IP area.

The notice starts out like many others:

We are providing you this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 17 USC??512(c) to make Softlayer.com aware of material on its network or system that infringes the exclusive copyrights of Woodman Labs, Inc d/b/a GoPro (“Company”). We hereby affirm that the undersigned is authorized to act on behalf of Company whose exclusive intellectual property rights we believe to be infringed as described herein.

Barring the extraneous question marks, this all looks perfectly normal. But the next paragraph reroutes the entire DMCA.

We have a good faith belief that the Internet site found at digitalrev.com infringes the rights of the Company by using the following trademarks of the Company:

“GOPRO” Registered: 3/3/2009 US Registration# 3032989

“HERO” Registered: 12/20/2005 US Registration# 3308141

At this point, the notice’s issuer, Patrick Hayes (Brand Manager for Woodman Labs), is in uncharted territory. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice is for copyright violations only, as can readily be determined by name of the notice itself. Hayes reasserts his trademark violation claim a few paragraphs later, along with a sentence that briefly raises copyright again before returning to the misguided effort at hand.

As you may know, if this information is not removed after notice that complies with the DMCA, the Internet Service Provider may also be held liable for the copyright infringement.

I have a good faith belief that use of the trademark(s) described above in connection with the domain and URLs described above is not authorized by the trademark owner, and such use is not otherwise permissible under applicable law.

I represent that the information in this notification is true and correct and that I am authorized to act on behalf of the trademark owner.

Hayes really shouldn’t be “representing” that any of this bizarre IP melange is “true and correct.” Most of it isn’t, starting with using a copyright-only takedown form to shutter a review over alleged trademark infringement. Then there’s this: the trademarks mentioned are character marks for the name of the product itself — “GoPro Hero” — suggesting that DigitalRev is not allowed to use the name of the product when reviewing the product. This is not how trademark law works. At all.

Hang on, though. It gets a bit weirder from there.

As I mentioned earlier, the first reaction is that GoPro doesn’t like DigitalRev’s review and wants it removed before many more people can read it. (That was DigitalRev’s first instinct as well, as detailed in its follow-up post on the subject.) Fortunately, DigitalRev screencapped the relevant part of the review.

There’s nothing in that review that looks like it should trouble GoPro enough to overreact in this fashion. In fact, commenters on the site point out that DigitalRev’s reviews of GoPro products usually range from “positive” to “overenthusiastic.” So, if the review isn’t the issue, what is?

Thankfully, another rep from GoPro responded quickly to clear up the confusion… by adding more confusion. The official statement, left at both Reddit and PetaPixel reads as follows:

Thanks for the heads up on this issue. The letter that was posted next to the review on DigitalRev was not sent in response to the review. Obviously, we welcome editorial reviews of our products. This letter was sent because DigitalRev is not an authorized reseller of GoPro products and they were using images and had incorrect branding and representation of our product in their online commerce store. As part of our program – we ask merchants who are selling our product to use authorized images. That is why DigitalRev was contacted. But – our letter did not clearly communicate this and that is something we will correct.

There are a few problems with this, but first and foremost is the fact that the URL specified in the takedown notice is the review’s URL. Nothing involving DigitalRev’s online store was mentioned in the letter and no offending URLs listed. Not only that, but this rep claims to have spotted offending ‘images,’ something the mentioned trademarks don’t cover. A comment left at PetaPixel by GoPro’s social media rep adds this to the conversation:

There are a few things that are muddling this situation at the moment. The notice was sent to digitalrev.com not because of the review, but because digitalreview.com is not an authorized reseller and are using our trademark and product images inappropriately. The notice is in regards to the sidebar, not the review itself, but we can see why it seemed like it as the url links to both.

We would never attempt to restrict anyone’s freedom to share their opinion about us or our products, positive or negative.

Even if this rep is correct and Woodman Labs meant to target improper use of its trademarks, it missed with both the delivery system and the URL specified. A DMCA notice can’t stop trademark infringement. Furthermore, while a hosting company can be held liable for contributory trademark infringement, it’s usually a result of the host mishandling takedown notices (and some conflation of copyright and trademark by the presiding judge), rather than a foregone conclusion. Then again, if you want to hold a service provider liable for this sort of infringement, it helps to use the standard process — directly contacting the site owner and asking him or her to remove the infringing items. Using a DMCA notice for alleged trademark infringement is just plain wrong, although various GoPro reps’ insistence that the trademark infringement includes “images” most likely explains the existence of this half-copyright, half-trademark aberration.

However, the most probable explanation for this IP circus is probably contained in this blog post from last November, which details the author’s brief altercation with Patrick Hayes and Woodman Labs over a parked domain containing the word “gopro.” The letter he received accused him of “domain infringement,” and while the tone of the letter was generally cordial, Patrick Hayes made the assumption that any registration of the term “gopro” could only be related to Woodman Labs’ products.

GoPro does not authorize any of its resellers (or anyone else) to use “GoPro” or “HERO” in domain names. Your registration of goprodivemaster.com is unfortunately in direct violation of this policy. We understand that your intention is simply to sell and promote our products, but GoPro cannot risk misleading customers into believing that they are interacting directly with GoPro when they are engaging with your website or your organization. The use of our trademark terms in your business name may cause confusion, and is prohibited under international trademark law.

Even if the domain redirects to another site, this is not a permissible use of our brand terms.

Please understand: GoPro has spent years building its brand name—only the company itself is legally represented as “GoPro” or the manufacturer of the “HERO” line of cameras. We need you to kindly discontinue the use of our registered/trademarked name as soon as possible.

The author points out that his parked domain had nothing to do with GoPro or its cameras. He also points out that this issue will certainly surface again, considering the Professional Association of Underwater Instructors uses the term quite often in relation to its instructor development centers. Additionally, he did a little detective work and checked out the WHOIS information on the email address and found the domain was associated with MarkMonitor. So, it appears GoPro is outsourcing its IP protection to a company that seems to take a pray-and-spray approach to takedown notices.

Quite possibly it takes little more than having the word “gopro” appear in a URL (like the review above) to summon the bot-fury of MarkMonitor and Patrick Hayes, “Brand Manager.” This explains the bizarre trademark claims and the incomprehensible takedown of a positive review. If this is indeed the case, GoPro is probably considering taking the job back in-house, seeing as its reputation is being damaged further with each retelling of this unfortunate saga.

UPDATE: GoPro’s Twitter account claims that five other URLs were included in the takedown notice, but were scrubbed by DigitalRev prior to publishing. However, it has not posted the unedited version for verification.

Filed Under: cameras, copyright, dmca, reviews, trademark
Companies: gopro, markmonitor