Did Salesforce’s Social Studio steal its name from a competing social media marketing platform?
Marketing software maker StrongView certainly seems to think so. The San Francisco-based company is suing Salesforce for trademark infringement, claiming that it ripped off not just the name of StrongView’s Social Studio, but its color scheme as well.
It appears that both platform websites are using a similar shade of dark orange:
Earlier this year, Salesforce launched Social Studio, a social media marketing platform that integrates its Radian6 and Buddy Media platforms into a combined offering. StrongView’s Social Studio was launched in 2010, and performs much of the same functions, such as monitoring, publishing and engagement capabilities for marketers on social media.
The lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that Salesforce deliberately went ahead with the naming of its product, despite knowing about StrongView’s prior use and established trademark.
PCWorld reports that StrongView is seeking damages from Salesforce for deliberately harming its business, and is demanding not just the termination of Salesforce’s Social Studio name, but a written acknowledgement of its trademark infringement.
As can be expected Salesforce hasn’t commented on the ongoing litigation, but it might have a case.”Social Studio” isn’t exactly an extremely unique name for a product. Besides there are plenty of similarly named marketing products out there. Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle all have their own version of a “Marketing Cloud” and one suspects that “Social Studio” is probably used in the same manner.
However, Salesforce just might have to be the one to tweak its title, especially since it would be difficult to argue that StrongView’s trademark is invalid.
“Most trademark disputes are quickly resolved, often because it is easier for an accused infringer to change marks than to litigate,” said Scott Daniels, a partner with the Washington, D.C., intellectual-property law firm Westerman, Hattori, Daniels and Adrian, via email.
It’s common for accused infringers to argue that a trademark is invalid, “though here the issuance of a registration for the mark makes that argument of invalidity quite difficult,” Daniels added.
