Jules Yap (a pseudonym) created the IKEAHackers website in 2006 for the purpose of gathering together all the cool "hacks" of IKEA furniture she had seen around the Internet. The ideas range from simply adding decorations to make a piece look unique to major revamps that require "power tools and lots of ingenuity."
Yesterday, Yap told her following that she had "a bit of bad news"—IKEA's trademark lawyers sent her a "cease and desist" letter that was causing her to give up the domain name.
"I am crushed," wrote Yap, who will move to a new as-yet-unnamed domain in the near future.
Yap negotiated with IKEA, but it would only let her keep the site if it was "non-commercial" and she took down all advertising. She explained:
I agreed to that demand. Because the name IKEAHackers is very dear to me and I am soooo reluctant to give it up. I love this site’s community and what we have accomplished in the last eight years. Secondly, I don’t have deep enough pockets to fight a mammoth company in court.
Now by June 23, I would need to take down the ads, not earn any income, and still advance their brand on this site. Wonderful!
While she will keep the IKEAHackers site, Yap will transition to a new as-yet-unnamed domain in the near future, where she will be able to host advertisements. Yap described herself as "a blogger who is obviously on their side," and she lamented the fact that the company didn't talk to her "like normal people do without issuing a C&D."
Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, who wrote about the IKEA v. IKEAHackers brouhaha earlier today, called the cease and desist "pure bullying, an attempt at censorship." He wrote:
Ikea's C&D is, as a matter of law, steaming bullshit. There's no trademark violation here—the use of Ikea's name is purely factual. The fact that money changes hands on Ikeahackers (which Ikea's lawyers seem most upset about) has no bearing on the trademark analysis. There is no chance of confusion or dilution from Ikeahackers' use of the mark... I'm shocked to see that Jules has a lawyer who advised [her] to take such a terrible deal.
Doctorow also dismantled the oft-repeated myth that aggressive trademark enforcement is a legal necessity.
"[W]hile there is a very slim chance of trademarks being 'genericized' through a failure to police, this risk is grossly overstated by trademark lawyers (quick, name three modern, active trademarks that have been genericized through a lack of policing), and in any event, you can get the same benefit from offering a royalty-free license as you get from threatening a lawsuit," he wrote.
IKEA's move to push IKEAHackers off their Web domain comes less than a month after Google was scolded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for "trademark bullying" against a parody website.
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