crockpot copyright issues?

Tough question.

Although I am not an attorney, my answer is that it depends on whether the Crock-Pot company enforces its trademark.

But given so many pages out there in the wild offering "crockpot recipes", it is a hard call.

This may fall in a situation like Coke, Kleenex and other name brands that are used as a generic term to describe any product in the niche. It is hard to beat back common usage of a brand name as a normal word in the modern language.

These name brands have become so popular that their names are used every day to describe their products and the products of competitors.

If you are selling cookers -- made by you or another company -- and trying to call those items crockpots, then you might have a problem.

If you are dealing with products that are created in crockpots, you might be safe.

But as usual, you should not take my word to be gold.

The only people who can truly advise you accurately are attorneys, and I am not licensed in my state or any other to practice law. :p

Thank You all for excellent! feedback.. @ kevin I DID use different spelling! yay! I didnt even think about that.. and my product is about crockpot recipes @ tpw. I m not selling a competitor but rather something to be cooked inside the crockpot.. But I think my cousin is an attorney maybe I can ask her for definitive answer.. Thanks for your comments I feel better about it

You can change the name to Slow Cooker.

A Slow Cooker means the same thing as a Crockpot! Funny, huh?

Let me explain.

My daughter bought me a Black and Decker Slow Cooker for Christmas. However, it doesn't meet my needs (it doesn't have an automatic shut off mechanism -- you need to watch over it for 6 or 7 hours -- NO THANKS)!

So, I thought I would do a little Google research on Slow Cookers. You know what other term came up automatically? Yup .... Crockpots.

Therefore, I would change the wording from Crockpot to Slow Cooker ... you'll get the same result.

Just a simmering thought

Cheers,

JMB

@jmb thanks!! I thought of that just all the books on amazon are called slow cooker recipes whereas no one is using crockpot recipes and that term autopopulates on amazon... but maybe theres a reason hmm

I am not a lawyer but as mentioned it can be a tricky thing. I have some clients that I build sites for that don't really care and other who insist no trade names be including in the domain.

Personally I have never had any problems when using trademark names in any of the domains I purchased, having said that my first option is to always purchase domains that don't have any trademark words.

As Bill said, it's trademark ... not copyright and it will depend entirely on what the trademark owner wants to do and how you use their trademark. You may get a cease and desist after the site is developed. It could happen at any time, whether immediately or a couple of years from now.

Only a lawyer can advise you whether or not you're asking for trouble using that name.

Also not a lawyer here,
but I've seen a lot of cookbooks specifically for crockpot recipes and think that it is not trademark infringement. Mostly trademark infringement is acted on when the word used causes confusion about your company being the same as the company with the trademarked product.

If you are concerned about it -- why not write to, or call the company and ask if they mind that you are using the word. You can also do a patent search on the patent website to find out about actual patents that exist. Actually - I've never seen the word written in any form with the R or TM after it. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist - but I've never seen it. Are you even certain that it is a patented term? That's where to start asking questions.

Maybe use a variation of slow cooker/slow cooking instead?

@suzanne thanks for research I will check out that link and @ nature lady that makes sense obviously I'm not trying to compete with crockpot... I think I will proceed confidently after i do a little bit more research understanding the slight risk

Figured I'd chime in on this since I was actually performing some research on Google about this very thing. I have a Kindle book with the term -- Crockpot -- in the title and indeed, the company that has trademarked Crock-Pot has come after me. Amazon has taken down the book and the company has told me that I can no longer use Crockpot but that I can use Slow Cooker.

Interesting too because according to my research, this same company has also trademarked Slo-Cooker.

I suspect they tried to trademark Slow-Cooker but were probably denied the trademark so they dropped the "w."

To be honest, I feel we should in fact be able to use "crockpot" or "crock pot." I specifically did not use the actual trademark of "Crock-Pot" but they came after me anyway.

And since they obviously have deeper pockets than I, I will most likely change everything to slow cooker even though I agree with the dissenting opinion in the Arbitration link given above which I had also found before coming here and sharing.

jack

I think this is one of those cases where the trademark holder is happy to have their TM tossed around because it brings them what we all want, more exposure and: SALES

You can't always help what some overworked employee at Amazon decides, and we do not have the book title, but having a trademark does not give one a monopoly on the word for all uses - especially book titles. That is because there is typically no confusion about who the author of the book is and that they are not the trademark holder.

Thus, no consumer confusion.

Tons of book titles have trademarks. Including 2914 listed on Amazon today for a search on Crockpot.

.

If crockpot is the only word your are worrying about, I wouldn't worry about it. if you are using a company name such as *company name* crockpot, that could be a problem.