Digg, trademarks, and confusion
A while ago our trademark attorney approached us and was concerned we could loose the name 'digg'. I had no idea this was possible as we had already filed for the trademark. Apparently if you don't enforce the TM (meaning not let other sites use it) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Digg spent 2006 turning into one of the fastest-rising sites on the web — Alexa data from January showed its traffic catching Slashdot despite being barely a year old — and commentary followed close behind, including a MarketingShift piece four days earlier arguing the downfall of Digg was forthcoming. Against that backdrop, the blog post is a founder admitting an operational blind spot: Digg had filed for the 'digg' trademark, but its attorney warned that filing alone protects nothing — an unenforced mark can be lost.
That warning lands at a moment when the word 'digg' is doing double duty as brand and verb, with imitator sites borrowing the naming convention freely. For a young consumer web company whose identity is its community vocabulary, the choice between policing the name and staying friendly to the ecosystem is genuinely uncomfortable.
First-order effects
- Digg now has to start actively enforcing its mark — contacting sites using 'digg'-derived branding — or risk the trademark attorney's stated outcome of losing the name it already paid to file for.
- Sites riding the Digg naming wave face a new legal exposure they did not have last week: what looked like harmless imitation becomes infringement once the holder enforces.
Second-order effects
- Imitator and adjacent social-news sites are pushed toward distinctive branding of their own, since building a product on someone else's enforced trademark is now a known liability rather than a free ride.
- Every enforcement action Digg takes will be read against the community goodwill it depends on — heavy-handed takedowns feed directly into narratives like the 'downfall' argument already circulating.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, fast-growing Web 2.0 companies institutionalize trademark policing earlier in their lifecycle, treating community vocabulary and verbs as assets to be defended rather than shared.
- Enforcement pressure pushes the wider social-news ecosystem toward consolidation of identity around a few protected brands, raising the bar for clones to survive as anything more than features.
The trend: Consumer web startups are learning that viral naming is a double-edged asset, forcing them to shift from growth-first branding to active intellectual-property defense as their names become verbs.