Trademark Turns 5 Years Old!
In December 2005, The Syndicate became the first virtual community to Trademark it's name. We also protected our Logo and our Slogan with their own mark. Technically we have Servicemarks which are simply Trademarks where the "commerce" we engage is in Services related. Our Services include not only things offered to our members but also our consulting, testing and strategy guide work done for game developers and computer hardware manufacturers. In December 2010, those marks turned five years old!

The five year milestone is significant because at this point our mark is exclusively ours for as long as we continue to use it. During the first five years, should there have existed any other group that performs the same type of commerce using the same name, but who was founded earlier than we were, they could have challenged the mark for themselves. Since no other group exists, no challenges were forthcoming and after five years, the mark is now permanently ours. This first five years has seen a great deal of progress on enforcement of the mark. We have worked with a number of companies to enforce our mark and limit its usage, within their sites, products and virtual worlds to only our group. Interestingly, one of the few companies to ignore the Trademark is Blizzard. Despite several methods of contacting them from our lawyers, no replies were forthcoming and no enforcement of our mark within their worlds took place. For a company so committed to enforcement of their own marks, one would have expected a higher degree of support for others intellectual property.

Congrats Syndicate members for yet again setting the standard within the online world. LLTS!