Swedish Digg clone puts “DIGG” in header

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In a recent redesign of the popular Swedish marketing blog Researcher and the private blog deep.edition by the same author, things took an interesting turn. The new aggregated site (called “Researcher DIGG” in the header) with posts from both these blogs turned into a small Digg clone where readers have the power to “digg” different stories which affects the RSS flows and so on.

Turning it into a Digg clone might be an interesting move, but putting the word “Digg” in the header and using the Digg terminology might not be the best move. To protect the Digg brand the real Digg has sent cease & desist letters to several sites using the trademarked name in site names. Back in 2006 they ordered diggdot.us to change their name and it was changed to doggdot.us. In the same way DiggGames.com changed to games1.org. The reason for these cease & desist letters is that Digg needs to protect it’s brand and if they fail to do so they will lose their trademark.

So I’m a bit curious about this move from Researcher, even if they would not receive a cease & desist letter from Digg I don’t think this is the ethical thing to do. Especially from a marketing blogger who would value every companies right to their own brand.

It will be interesting to see what follows.

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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