306885 - Getfoxie.com contains "look and feel" of m.o

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Marketing :: Trademark Violations, task)

Description

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

As the summary says, getfoxie.com contains the look and feel of mozilla.org.
Under normal circumstances, this may not be a big deal, but because they're
attempting to offer a competing product to Firefox, it could/will confuse users
into thinking they're downloading Firefox.

From the mozilla.org website: "The rights in the trademarks, logos, service
marks of the Mozilla Foundation, as well as the look and feel of this web site,
are not licensed under the Creative Commons license, and to the extent they are
works of authorship (like logos and graphic design), they are not included in
the work that is licensed under those terms."

In addition, it's name is fairly similar to Firefox (Foxie) to seemingly
replicate it and will almost definitely confuse users.

Comment 1

[Chris Beard]

Thanks for the report.  Late last night we sent our standard friendly notice
which precedes the cease and desist letter, pointing out what they may have done
wrong and asks that they should review their site and stop any and all
infringing and/or confusing use of Mozilla trademarks and copyrights.  They have
responded, and are looking to make changes.  We'll follow up on Tuesday and will
refer the matter to Mozilla's outside legal counsel then if need be.
 
Please do follow up on this bug if you notice anything else which seems
inappropriate.

/cb

Comment 2

[M** A****]

The contact page for Foxie <http://www.getfoxie.com/contact/> still mentions
donating to Mozilla and links to Team Foxie

Comment 3

[fantasai]

It seems to me they updated their web site design within the past week or so:
the backgrounds have changed from what I remember. The blue banner has swooshes
in it, the main page background is light gray, and the download link and sidebar
backgrounds look different. The last-modified header on the images reads 18
September 2005.

But the overall site design, the logo, and the *name* all still infringe on MF's
copyrights & trademarks. So either they totally misunderstand what they're doing
wrong, or they're ignoring it.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

IMO the site design, logo and name are not close enough for us to complain.
(Chris may have a different view, in which case he may take up the situation
with our lawyers.) 

They have definitely changed the language on the donations page to remove any
suggestion that the donation is for us and not for them.

Gerv

Comment 5

[Eddie Biggs]

G'day, A couple of days ago I downloaded Foxie believing it to be  Mozilla  product relatingt to apyware etc because of its name and logo.  It was not until a necessary system restore (possibly due to foxy or the codec from where it came) that I realized it was not your product (after searching your site for it).  A review on download.com claims it loads spyware too.  In the Austrlain legal venacular their conduct is deceptive or likely to deceive under our Trade Practices Act, no doubt there are passing off, copyright and TM issues too - but that is all your call not mine.  However, I was certainly deceived and suffered inconvenience and soem residual performance issues that only became apparent after Foxie.  Cheers, Eddie Biggs  

Comment 6

[Matthew Lyons]

The Knowledge Base on Foxie.com (http://www.foxiekb.com/index.php?sid=45280&lang=en&action=artikel&cat=1&id=9&artlang=en) , titled " Why would you rip off Firefox?", contains some interesting references to Firefox.  They admit to "imitating" firefox, and state that it is a superior product, as it does not suffer from the, as they put it, inherit problems of Firefox (such as bad memory handling and incompatibly with many web sites).  Well, this looks like ad admition to me, what does everyone think?

-Matt-

Comment 7

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

The site is different enough now that I doubt it infringes. Closing this bug out as FIXED.