Piaggio Shuts Down www.world-of-guzzi.de

[geodoc]

From the Oz Guzzi Forum:

Who's next?

Got this from a Finnish Guzzi rider, via another Italian bike board:

"The administrators of the largest German language Guzzi-related
forum/portal, www.world-of-guzzi.de, have been contacted by the Piaggio
lawyers and told to stop use of the wqrd "Guzzi" in the name of the
portal...

This leaves me utterly speechless, really. What the portal has been is a
free-of-charge support point for German-language Guzzi riders and very
good advertisement for the brand.

Mind you, it was this forum that in late 2007 organized a collection and
threw a Christmas dinner party for the Guzzi factory workers,
temporarily laid off at that time. While any normal marketing department
would be ready to give their second kidney for such a customer base, the
Piaggio lawyers obviously do not - they told the WoG crew to stop
whatever they are doing or at least using the Guzzi name there."



Pretty stupid on Piaggio's part I'd say.

 

[Mark111]

Surely there has to be more to this than meets the eye.
Do any of our German friends have any insight in to the issue as this potentially has major implications.

Is it just a brawl over the use of the name or is it just the end result of some other dispute and this is the punishment?
It makes no sense from a business perspective to alienate your best supporters without some serious reason although we are dealing with the sometimes hot headed Italians or worse their bean counters.

Mark

 

[Brian UK]

Have they been over critical about the new models?
We were threatened a couple of years ago over some of the negative content of our forum by Piaggio UK.
I pointed out that we did not allow lies or hearsay, and indeed it is/was the very nature of these forums for owners to ask about problems rather than extoll the virtues of the bikes.
They went very quiet after that, though I did put a note on the forum reminding potential owners that actually the number of problems reported was generally small compared to the number of new Guzzi models on the road worldwide.

 

[Series4]

It happens from time to time and the marketing groups are either not told about it or are told to stay out of it. Most of the lawyers' worry is about trademarks and intellectual property etc etc etc. It happened especially with MG and Jaguar some years ago. I had to live with it a couple of times with the global brand I used to be a part of but at the end of the day after a bit of wriggling nobody got closed down

 

[Brian UK]

It has been suggested that all this is because World of Guzzi sounds like an official Guzzi website, of course Guzzitech does not, neither does Guzzi Exchange. We have Club GB added to our title, and have factory permission to use Moto Guzzi in that context.
We were only threatened with a freezing of any support, or going our separate ways.

 

[Bill Hagan]

Surely a member of that forum is a lawyer or knows someone with knowledge of intellectual-property and related law over there. In the US, at least, it has been my observation that those "cease & desist" letters are too often reflexively sent out by legal suits or paralegals without the review and reflection one might wish.

They can have, however, the desired effect, i.e., scaring the recipients into sphincter-fusing fear!

While Piaggio likely has deeper pockets than the forum owner(s), doesn't mean the latter cannot -- if they have legal basis -- stand up to such warnings.

Over the years, I have had several chats with corporate counsel in various industries about uses of other trade-dress, copyright, patent matters (ours and theirs), and in every case -- not simply the lucky few -- when it was lawyer-to-lawyer and we got past the pleasantries and banter about this and that, we were able to work something out, and in every case (OK, save one), did not involve backing down completely. None needed to go to court, and none required lengthy negotiating, but, in every instance -- OK, except that one -- were one-phone-call things.

So, this is not necessarily the end of the world as we know it.

Bill

 

[ferdi]

it is more complicated than the word Guzzi in the name.
First they tried to trademark their logo with an eagle with dumbs up which called the lawers of Piaggio.
The trademark was deleted, but the problem seemed to stay.
Nobody outside the admins of WOG knows real details and what the real reason was at least.
As we have heard, Piaggio only wanted to be the owner of the name and of the domain, but the operators of the forum would have been allowed to use it furthermore. For any reason they did not want that and closed the website WOG and the forum
But, as I have written, nobody outside knows details.

Maybe Cantaloop, a former Admin of WOG and founder of the separated http://www.guzzi-forum.de/Forum/ Forum , and a member of this forum also, can tell more details about it.
By the way, as of my knowledge, the guzzi-forum.de was and is the largest german Guzzi-Forum since 1 year.

 

[Cantaloop]

Of course we all are sad about the decision. piaggio made. But everybody has to be aware of the fact, that its dangerous, to use domains with brand-parts in it. GuzziTech - sounds like an official Guzziwebsite for example.

Anyway. Guzzi is not very strong in Germany. But the drivers habe a very special relationship to their brand. And putting down a private Guzzi-Forum is not the best way, to donate a lot of work and the idea of bringing Guzzi-People together.

World of Guzzi was a germ cell for further internet-platforms in germany - like guzzi-forum.de. We are grateful to the founders of WoG. It's just a shame that this private initiative is broken. In Germany we call it: shooting sparrows with cannons.

 

[Cantaloop]

Two possible reasons for piaggios decision:

1. There is an official Guzzi-Owners-Club called "Guzzi World Club" - very close to "World-of-Guzzi"
2. The new Guzzi-Museum could get a "new" name: might be "World of Guzzi"

 

[Carl Allison]

WOG should have offered to change it to "Weirdness of Guzzi".

 

[Mark111]

Cantaloop,
Thanks for the clarification, it makes a lot more sense now.
Pity they couldn't come to some alternative arrangement that satisfied both sides.
Maybe there were a few hard heads who didn't want to compromise or were offended.
I can understand that Piaggio would want to protect their trademark and naming rights especially if it clashes with some future plans for their use.
It just seems a bit draconian but there are always 2 sides to a story.

Mark

 

[Cantaloop]

Hi Mark,
i agree with you. Were do not have all informations about this story. So it is difficult to judge. To keep our guzzi-forum.de safe, we registrated two other de-domains. We startet year ago, now we got more than 2500 active users. It is important, to have a safe option to keep the forum online.

For the WoG-Team it is very hard. The idea startet 1996 with a yahoo-mailing-list. A lot of guzzifans joined Wolrd of Guzzi und started to connect with each other for hints and help. The WoG grew up to a big familiy with a lot of friendships and a lot of sympathy for the brand Guzzi.

If you like to unserstand the meaning of WoG to the Guzzi-Drivers in Germany, read the following lines.. and sorry for my bad english.

When i bought my first Guzzi 1999 (California EV) i searched for some informations in internet. Because in Germany you don't see Guzzi very often. I found World of Guzzi, shared my experiance with this fantastc bike, realized, that Guzzi-drivers are quiet near to my place und visited my first motobike-meeting, organized by MGML-which is a part of World of Guzzi. Guzzi-drivers became friends. And one of them, Paul Denzer, had the idea, to collect money and spend it to the guzzi-workers to have a chrismas-party. It was the time of change. Aprillia was the new owner, winter is hard in italy, most of the employees hat to stay home. No money, no chrismasparty like the years before. The Guzzi-Worlers could not believe, what happened: The legendary place "Al Verde", a nice restaurant always connected to Guzzi, helped to make Pauls idea come true. The workers sended one person, to check it out, an then they called each other by cellphone... "yes, it is no joke, come here to have a party, there is food an wine... wow... i get goosebombs... and all Guzzi-Workers came to Al Verde... one of them said to Paul: Now a dream of Carlo Guzzi came true: Drivers an Workers are banded together... Paul Denzer died 2 years ago, 52 years old. I will never forget him.

Just one example of the power of emotion and the power of WoG. So nearly everybody of germanys guzzi-drivers is sad about the end of World of Guzzi.

 

[Brian UK]

In Germany we call it: shooting sparrows with cannons.

In the UK (and probably the US) we call it "Shooting onself in the foot".

 

[ferdi]

In Germany we call it: shooting sparrows with cannons.

In the UK (and probably the US) we call it "Shooting onself in the foot".

thats the same in german (of course in german :lol: ), but the meaning is a little different,
you would say "break a fly on the wheel" or "crack a nut with a sledgehammer"

 

[RJVB]

Both expressions are applicable here.

What amazes me a bit here is that in all official 'applications' that I know of, including the Guzzi World Club, the full brand name is used: Moto Guzzi. That suggests that the word Guzzi ought to be just a name - and I'd be very curious to know just how many people are wearing that name in and outside of Italy.

There has been some legal 'harassment' of the Guzzitheque here in France, not so long ago. As far as I remember that was a rather lose and independent action that didn't really have Piaggio's full weight behind it. The webmaster just removed the public links to a wealth of documentation.

 

[patrick]

Piaggio are far from alone in moves to control user oragnisations. Harley and BMW are much further along this road.
It's a normal business move these days, open sources and user criticism is "off message".