Subud Trademark Registration
( reprinted from
Subud World News )
After six or seven years of
efforts by many people and many committees we have finally recovered the domain
'Subud.com' . We would like to thank John Daly of Subud Ireland since he has
put in a great deal of time and worked on our trademark registration and these
issues for us. We will still use 'Subud.org' as the main 'face' of Subud, which
is where all of our Internet presence meets. 'Subud.org' will still remain the
domain that we will publicize and link to for both members and people wishing
to find us, but some people will try 'Subud.com' when they want to find us, and
now they will reach us.
In celebrating this success
I would like to remind everyone of some points that this effort illustrates and
also tell the story of how this came about. 'Subud.com' was registered by an
individual Subud member who, when approached many years ago, wanted to keep it
for his own. For a short time he hosted Subud.com in an Internet 'chat room'.
This placed the Subud symbol and the name 'Subud' in jeopardy because it
appeared below the name of the chat room company. It read something like 'Subud, a Community of Worldly Chats,'
with the Subud symbol below their logo, which was contrary to Bapak's clear
instructions. If this continued eventually anyone would have been able to use
the symbol and the name freely, without any connection to Subud.
The chat room dissolved and
eventually the domain was not renewed by the member who originally registered
it. We all know that the Internet is filled with unscrupulous people and
some of them are official domain registrars. John Daly and myself put advanced
orders for the domain should it ever become available and the registrars were
aware of this. One of these registrars
used their special access to acquire the domain from underneath our advanced
orders and then just needed to wait long enough to turn that into money. We tried and tried but, to make a long story
short, eventually we had to resort to taking them to international arbitration. At the end of the day we
recovered the domain at a cost of $1200. We could only do this because we have
an EU Trademark (and others) for the word 'Subud', and the Subud Symbol is
registered in Europe.
So what's my point? When Subud Members go out on their own and
register and use domains with the word 'Subud' in it,
they cause a liability both present and future to the World Subud
Association, which is the official body that owns the trademarks. They really need to ask permission from the
WSA before registering and talking to us about their ideas. We have lots of Subud sites, like Subud SICA
or Subud.net that need new, fresh ideas and qualified people to take an
interest in them. Surely there is a
place for new ideas and vision within the framework that we already have. It is hard to tell members this without
raising alarms and complaints against WSA for interfering in their rights, but
WSA is protecting all of our rights. When
people tire of a site because they do not have the interest that they once had,
like 'Subud.com' it can then be picked up by unscrupulous people who can divert that Subud site to very unsuitable
content. Then WSA must go to the work
and expense of recovering and registering it year after year, just to keep it
out of the hands of others. Please talk
to us before you register a domain with the name Subud in it, and if you have
done it already, please talk with us.
Every website that uses the word 'Subud' or the Subud symbol must use
the registration symbol properly in order to protect the proper use of these in
the future.
But for now we can
celebrate that if you type 'Subud.com' you will be directed to us. We put out
the call to all qualified people who want to lend a hand to use this site to
create something that those who 'google' it will
find rich, rewarding, informative, interesting, mystical, enterprising,
spiritual, noble, human, cultural, and filled with the essence of what Subud is
about.
Footnote from the editors:
In an email to us about this article, Matthew says:
WSA took the advice of
their patent and registration attorney regarding our registration marks, and I
tried to implement that with the least pain to anyone. I simplified the
instructions by adding 'SubudŽ' to the phrase, 'SubudŽ and the seven circles symbol
are the registered marks of the World Subud Association', making it easier for
websites to comply rather than having to make three changes: the symbol, the
phrase, and 'SubudŽ' somewhere on the page.
My simplified instructions fully adhere to what we were advised by the
attorney.