Gourt Home::Gourt :: Yellowikis
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Launched in January 2005, Yellowikis uses the MediaWiki software to collect basic business information.
The mission statement says that the site aims to be "the biggest, friendliest, most up to date, most predictable, least-discriminatory collection of basic business information in the world."
The introduction goes on to say: "Yellowikis will be open, free to both companies and users, global and multilingual" - As of February 2006 the Yellowikis main page had been translated into more than 20 different languages.
Company information that users are encouraged to add includes: Basic contact details - including company name, address, websites and telephone numbers as well as internal Yellowiki links to competitors.
Some users also enter a number of codes including a two letter country code as well as a Standard Industrial Classification, International Standard Industry Code and North American Industry Classification System. Some users are also adding geo codes and Skype ids.
Companies that are deleted from Wikipedia for not being encyclopedic or for being adverts sometimes get Transwiki to Yellowikis.
A commercial business listing company Yell however, now wants Mr Youlten to shut down his site claiming that people will confuse the two organisations. This might be considered to be anti-competitive. Yell's claim is given considerable weight by the slogan on YelloWiki's front page that they are "Yellow Pages for the 21st Century" although in their public protestations, Yellowiki claim that they are not trying to create association between themselves and Yellow Pages. Youlton admits that the slogan "Yellow Pages for the 21st Century" is a breach of trademark/copyright, but has not removed it, instead offering to do so as a bargaining chip.
However, a European court has already decided that the 'two word' phrase 'Yellow Pages' when used within Europe, cannot be considered the property of a single company. Yellowikis has simple used it in a sentence and correctly added the 'definite article' (The) in front of it. This might be more of a demonstration of poor trademark registration rules, rather than an attempt at 'passing off.' Also, as it is a phrase used around the world to differentiate commercial listings from 'white page' non-commercial listings, it means it is almost universally treated as a Genericized_trademark -which has long since passed into the public domain. This highlights the weakness of choosing in a trademark name that lacks sufficient uniqueness.
See also
- Wikinews.org Yell threatens to shut down Yellowikis
Further reading
- Yellowikis - A Case Study of a Web 2.0 Business, Part 1
- Yellowikis: a Web 2.0 Case Study, Part 2 - Industry Disruption and The Competition
- Yellowikis: Demonstrating Web 2.0 principles
- Yell threatens to shut down Yellowikis from Wikinews, 2006-07-05
External links
References
"Yellowikis"