Jason Gambert fails in attempt to trademark SEO

Reading the background to this, I am amazed and surprised how far this went – and how much money it cost. So I am blogging about it here to hopefully do my part to raise awareness of it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The scumbag Jason Gambert tried to register “SEO” as a trademark, with the intention of holding legitimate companies to ransom over their use of it.

Admittedly I am British and do not know the ins and outs of USA law, but it seems disgraceful that someone can try and register what is obviously a generic word or phrase, then try and extort money from businesses to use it.

Luckily for everyone else in the SEO industry, one brave lady called Rhea Drysdale decided to fight him in court.  If you are not aware of Rhea, she runs Outspoken Media, an internet marketing company.

Thankfully the fight has now ended with Rhea the victor, but leaving her with $17,000 of legal bills to pay.  You can read the full story (and maybe consider donating a few bucks towards those costs) over at her blog.

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2 Responses to “Jason Gambert fails in attempt to trademark SEO”

1. Chris says:

   March 19, 2010 at 12:13 pm

   That’s amazing story. How could he ever believed that he could do that? Thanks for the information
2. EngineSearchSEO.com says:

   March 31, 2010 at 9:50 am

   What a missed opportunity. Either party could have leveraged this with the publicity and using content based around the keyword in question, ‘SEO’.