Onesies
Baby Wit received a cease and desist order from the Gerber Corporation for the use of the word "onesie" on our website. We've gotten to a point in our business careers where receipt of a cease and desist order isn't instant cause for a freak out. These things fly around like hotcakes, American businesses having a seemingly endless team of lawyers sitting around with nothing to do but worry about who unknowingly slipped a trademarked term onto a web page.
(If big business stock weren't so overinflated, we wouldn't have time for this argument, because they'd be properly competing for a buck like the rest of us, and wouldn't have the money to hire a bunch of overpriced lawyers.)
The onesie, however, is an interesting case. Google indexes over 157,000 web pages that use the word onesie, the majority of which are commercial sites selling onesies not related to Gerber. I am sure that many of these companies, as they creep up the search rankings, are well on their way to receiving the same cease and desist letter we have. And they will, if they are small businesses like ours, pull the word onesie off their websites.
But there is a problem here. There is no good searchable equivalent of the word onesie. A quick look at keyword statistics reveals that when people are shopping for onesies, they type in the keyword onesies. None of the other synonyms match up--creepers, bodysuits, one pieces, snapsuits--none of them get nearly the traffic that the word "onesie" does.
Furthermore, these terms have their own inherent problems. One pieces, more often than not, relate to women's swimsuits, and so if you use this term on your site you have people visiting looking for swimsuits instead of baby onesies. (For a while, we were getting a ton of traffic on the search term "one piece sex." A quick glance at the stats revealed that these people were not, in fact, hunting for Baby Wit.) Creepers is largely a U.K. term. Bodysuits conjures surfing. You get the picture.
So the question becomes this: Should Gerber be allowed to control the Internet real estate on a powerful search term because they hold the trademark to that term? Gerber is essentially setting up a monopoly on a search term. They're saying that no one else is allowed to set up shop on Main St. (Onesie St.), forcing everyone else to sell in the ghetto (Get your One Piece Sex here!)
We get a lot of traffic on search terms like "funny onesies." These people are not looking for Gerber onesies--they're looking for us. Does Gerber have a right to take this business away from us? Can a company "own" a Google search term?
It'll be interesting to see if Google and Gerber eventually butt heads on this. Google's been selling their "Google onesie" in the Google store for a while now, even though it's printed on a American Apparel one piece. Wonder if they'll comply with the cease and desist...
(If big business stock weren't so overinflated, we wouldn't have time for this argument, because they'd be properly competing for a buck like the rest of us, and wouldn't have the money to hire a bunch of overpriced lawyers.)
The onesie, however, is an interesting case. Google indexes over 157,000 web pages that use the word onesie, the majority of which are commercial sites selling onesies not related to Gerber. I am sure that many of these companies, as they creep up the search rankings, are well on their way to receiving the same cease and desist letter we have. And they will, if they are small businesses like ours, pull the word onesie off their websites.
But there is a problem here. There is no good searchable equivalent of the word onesie. A quick look at keyword statistics reveals that when people are shopping for onesies, they type in the keyword onesies. None of the other synonyms match up--creepers, bodysuits, one pieces, snapsuits--none of them get nearly the traffic that the word "onesie" does.
Furthermore, these terms have their own inherent problems. One pieces, more often than not, relate to women's swimsuits, and so if you use this term on your site you have people visiting looking for swimsuits instead of baby onesies. (For a while, we were getting a ton of traffic on the search term "one piece sex." A quick glance at the stats revealed that these people were not, in fact, hunting for Baby Wit.) Creepers is largely a U.K. term. Bodysuits conjures surfing. You get the picture.
So the question becomes this: Should Gerber be allowed to control the Internet real estate on a powerful search term because they hold the trademark to that term? Gerber is essentially setting up a monopoly on a search term. They're saying that no one else is allowed to set up shop on Main St. (Onesie St.), forcing everyone else to sell in the ghetto (Get your One Piece Sex here!)
We get a lot of traffic on search terms like "funny onesies." These people are not looking for Gerber onesies--they're looking for us. Does Gerber have a right to take this business away from us? Can a company "own" a Google search term?
It'll be interesting to see if Google and Gerber eventually butt heads on this. Google's been selling their "Google onesie" in the Google store for a while now, even though it's printed on a American Apparel one piece. Wonder if they'll comply with the cease and desist...
Labels: baby clothes, Baby Wit, the politics of onesies
posted by bigdumbjim at 08:05
1 Comments:
I was appropriately astonished, but I can't think of anything appropriate or even entertaining to say, except, you know, fuck Gerber.
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