Newegg Rejects Best Buy's Copyright Infringement Claim

[exfileme]

Newegg has responded to copyright infringement claims by Best Buy which insist that the Geek On logo infringes on the latter's Geek Squad logo.

Newegg Rejects Best Buy's Copyright Infringement Claim : Read more

 

[LATTEH]

(best buy < new egg) && (new egg > bestbuy)


1

 

[Kaiser_25]

whats terrible is this is no exaggeration at all, best buy and radio shack have people just like this working for them, they have no idea what they are selling, and OF COURSE they overcharge by an insane margin..

 

[guardianangel42]

I loved that commercial; it was very funny.

 

[Guest]

Best Buy knows it's losing sales and this the main culprit. I never goto BB just because they charge so much for what really isn't exspensive at all, let alone I have never met anyone there who wasn't after the commision. I knew someone who worked there and they said it's usually a 40% markup..
Newegg has shown through it's sales and prices just how good they are. The reviews happen to be there, and the weight of them shine through now.
I am a geek, I live, breathe, eat, sleep, work computers, so the commerical is correct.

 

[11796pcs]

Go pout in a corner Best Buy, your actions just made me make all of my electronics purchases Newegg ones. If BB takes this to court and wins it will symbolize everything that's wrong with this country. On a lighter note, the disclaimer was awesome- "no animals were harmed in the making of this commercial"- pure awesomeness.

 

[fpsgamer_10]

Newegg's parody is spot on. From my experience, their sales floor employees just don't know much or if anything at all. They can only show you the direction to where you want to go, write a rain check and do checkouts. Awhile back, a major News corporation did an uncover investigation on major and local pc repair stores, and Best Buy's was one of the worse. The News corp undercover team brought in a pc (with a single unplugged cable which caused the pc to not boot up), and Geek squad not only overcharged them to just make a diagnosis, but claimed that the pc had major viruses, and needed a new hdd b/c it was corrupt and unusable. The bill ended up in the 250 range.

But one rare occasions, Best Buy will have sale on a product that you may want to buy.

 

[aznshinobi]

Due it was so true, Best Buy employee's don't know **** about computers. I'll ask em what a certain laptop has over another one, they just read me the specs.

 

[christop]

The commercial is funny and so true. I would not say it was directed at bestbuy cause all of the electronic stores are all the same they don't know what the hell they are selling and really don't know the difference between a I5 or an I3 cpu. They do know to try and sell upgrades and extended warranty.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

Best Buy sucks. Sorry, I can't put it any other way. After dealing with the Geek Squad for wanting to seriously overcharge me for some lame premium to include a million other services that I had absolutely no use for, they leave me no choice but to say...well...they suck. Lets see, I ended up having a motherboard with some bad parts on it. Best Buy wanted to charge me $200 to find out the problem. Fry's, on the other hand, $70, and this price gets right to the point. No bloatware, not bloatservice (I just made that term up myself), just find the damn problem and let me decide what to do next.

 

[Guest]

I have to defend BB and the Geek Squad. Bestbuy may not always have the most intelligent sales associates, but often, if you're watching, you can find a guy who knows the difference between DDR2 and DDR3. As far as the Geek Squad goes, They take a lot of crap from a lot of people... but the services MUST be both priced fairly AND decent if they are in business.

Simple economics would show that the company would go out of business if it is indeed like it is portrayed on these comment boards and in that commercial. Not all Sales associates and Geek Squad agents are great, but not all are mediocre either.

As far as infringing upon the trademark? Well, technically I do believe it is infringing, as they are the same industry, using the same colors, and a similar symbol trying to push the same product. Don't defend Newegg trying to capitalize on Geek Squad's name brand - Apple, AT&T and others have sued less obvious rip offs.

 

[The Greater Good]

I love that ad. So true, so true.

 

[Guest]

The article title is wrong. This isn't a copyright infringement claim, it's a trademark infringement claim. Completely different law. The good news is Best Buy will probably lose on the law.

 

[JamesSneed]

I recently fixed a friends Laptop after they took it to Geek squad. They said she needed a new keyboard on the laptop. Labor and parts were almost 1/2 the cost of the cheapo laptop so she dropped it by my house. Come to find out the crappy software "dock" application was intercepting key strokes. Stopped the software from loading up and the keyboard was fixed. Took me about 10 minutes to pull up the on screen "accessibility" keyboard and click the keys to see that they didn't register, nope not the keyboard. Started killing non essential apps and retested. I spent less than 1/2 hour. She would have spent way to much money to find the new keyboard didn't resolve the issue. Go newegg!

 

[omnimodis78]

[citation][nom]11796pcs[/nom]Go pout in a corner Best Buy, your actions just made me make all of my electronics purchases Newegg ones. If BB takes this to court and wins it will symbolize everything that's wrong with this country. On a lighter note, the disclaimer was awesome- "no animals were harmed in the making of this commercial"- pure awesomeness.[/citation]
Yeah, sure you will... You probably wrote this comment from one of the demo computers at Best Buy. "pure awesomeness" - really? What is this, 2005, or are you 9 years old?

 

[Telre]

I get that its "cool" to bash the successful company (similar to how many "geeks" like to bash apple), but I honestly don't think the comments are always fair. The interesting point that few people are willing to mention is that at the end of this referenced report, they had about 10 seconds were the reporter admitted he went to multiple best buys and had some of them just plug the cable back in and sent him on his way. Obviously any large company has bad employees (honestly I've met some terrible ones at bestbuy), but I also have to agree with the idea of protecting your image. I work at a small company, and if someone was specifically targeting us for supposed bad service I'd hope to hell that the owner would go after the people doing it. I certainly wouldn't want to work at a company that did not protect it's image.

Also the one comment I'd like to address. 200$ is for their diagnostic AND repair service. I have no idea what kind of show that guys manager/supervisor is running if they were charging you that just to diag it, which by the way is the same price as fry's 70 bucks. I guess this goes to my point that clearly there are some bad apples, but like I guess everyone wants to jump on the "cool" train and bash any employees of a successful company.

p.s. I bet you'd feel a lot different if you were the one who was smart enough to be making millions now for creating geeksquad or bestbuy, I know I would =)

 

[edilee]

Newegg has BB beat in all aspects and the choice of where to buy for serious/power users is simple. Newegg's tech's/salespersons are it's customers and with a fairly high margin of "tech" oriented customers the reviews alone are better than any saleperson at BB can offer you.

Oh and PRICE! As certain hardware prices decrease at Newegg as manafacturer's lower their price BB price remains at the release price...even years later...for example video cards.

BB is a retailer of products just like Lowes and Home Depot with I deal with alot in my line of work...folks know your stuff before walking in the door and don't expect alot of help if you need it. You will find a an employee every now and then that knows his stuff but this is rare. BB's Geek Squad is a freaking joke and why they have their panties in a bunch over this is beyond me.

 

[Guest]

As a Best Buy employee who actually knows his shit and strives for awesome customer service, I'm disheartened by all the bad press regarding their pc repair/sales people. I will not, however, argue with the fact that there ARE employees like this in the stores. Maybe increased pay and a more thorough qualification process would fix this. Obviously there are problems with my solution, but I still feel it would be for the best.

 

[ubercake]

The first of many acts of desperation to come from the double-B.

You have to know newegg and other reasonable retailers (online or otherise) have taken away some serious market share from BestBuy. I can't see Bestbuy being in business too much longer selling suckers $100 6' Monster HDMI cables and $50 4GB SD cards.

They can't even compete any longer with Amazon, Newegg, or Microcenter. A downward spiral. They had their day, but it's gone.

 

[whysobluepandabear]

Is this a joke? Newegg is like the professional Baseball team, while Best Buy is and has ALWAYS been Little League status.


Best Buy is in the same realm as Apple, in terms of technology knowledge. Both companies are posers whom market towards the technology inclined and retard individuals - whom may I add, choose to be that way. No one forces them to be so willfully ignorant and stupid. They choose to not take an hour of time to read and learn.

 

[verbalizer]

stay the course newegg, I'm on your side..

 

[roleki]

[citation][nom]The Greater Good[/nom]I love that ad. So true, so true.[/citation]
[citation][nom]IHartford[/nom]I have to defend BB and the Geek Squad. Bestbuy may not always have the most intelligent sales associates, but often, if you're watching, you can find a guy who knows the difference between DDR2 and DDR3. As far as the Geek Squad goes, They take a lot of crap from a lot of people... but the services MUST be both priced fairly AND decent if they are in business. Simple economics would show that the company would go out of business if it is indeed like it is portrayed on these comment boards and in that commercial. Not all Sales associates and Geek Squad agents are great, but not all are mediocre either. As far as infringing upon the trademark? Well, technically I do believe it is infringing, as they are the same industry, using the same colors, and a similar symbol trying to push the same product. Don't defend Newegg trying to capitalize on Geek Squad's name brand - Apple, AT&T and others have sued less obvious rip offs.[/citation]

Actually, between getting an extra 99.00 on every PC sale for 'optimization', the unnecessary repairs and incredible markup, Best Buy can operate Geek Squad until the cows come home. If they can fool two people per store per day, it'll cover the overhead of having the Geeks around. And sadly, they manage to fool a lot of people.

I get walkup traffic with home pc problems on an hourly basis, and all of them that have dealt with Geek Squad have eerily similar horror stories: Geek Squad wants 250.00 to remove a virus from the computer, or, Geek Squad charged them 250.00 and they lost all the data on their hard drive. And so on, etc.

Let's just say, I like Geek Squad because I make a LOT of money on their bad word-of-mouth. And I spend that money at Newegg.

 

[holdingholder]

Right on, Best Buy has a lot of nice stuff, too bad it's like 40% more expensive than an excellent place like newegg. God forbid they show customers the right way to save money on quality products.

 

[jimmysmitty]

[citation][nom]IHartford[/nom]I have to defend BB and the Geek Squad. Bestbuy may not always have the most intelligent sales associates, but often, if you're watching, you can find a guy who knows the difference between DDR2 and DDR3. As far as the Geek Squad goes, They take a lot of crap from a lot of people... but the services MUST be both priced fairly AND decent if they are in business. Simple economics would show that the company would go out of business if it is indeed like it is portrayed on these comment boards and in that commercial. Not all Sales associates and Geek Squad agents are great, but not all are mediocre either. As far as infringing upon the trademark? Well, technically I do believe it is infringing, as they are the same industry, using the same colors, and a similar symbol trying to push the same product. Don't defend Newegg trying to capitalize on Geek Squad's name brand - Apple, AT&T and others have sued less obvious rip offs.[/citation]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=00-996-170-02.jpg&Image=00-996-170-02.jpg&S7ImageFlag=0&WaterMark=1&Item=N82E16800996170&Depa=0&Description=Limited%20Edition%20Geek%20On%20Black%20T-Shirts%20Medium

Thats what BB is crying about. Look at that and tell me how it even remotley looks anything like the Geek Squad logo.

It does not. NewEgg has been around a very long time and has always been orange/white. Hell its in their company logo. This also has no shape. All it has is two words.

I am not sure that BB can claim a copyright on the word Geek.

[citation][nom]this one guy from California[/nom]As a Best Buy employee who actually knows his shit and strives for awesome customer service, I'm disheartened by all the bad press regarding their pc repair/sales people. I will not, however, argue with the fact that there ARE employees like this in the stores. Maybe increased pay and a more thorough qualification process would fix this. Obviously there are problems with my solution, but I still feel it would be for the best.[/citation]

I have a degree in IT Information Systems and over ten years of experience with computers. I build my own and know more than most computer geeks about older and current tech because all I do is read it.

When I was out of work for a few months, BB wouldn't even give me a call. I had friends who were told they were too qualified for Geek Squad.

Now I work at a local owned store and honestly, am glad I don't work for Geek Squad. Have had too many horror stories and misdiags to want to work there. One customer was told their RAM was bad and it would cost $250 to fix it.

We checked it and it passed every RAM test we threw at it. All it needed was a reinstall of Windows which we charged $100.

 

[sinfulpotato]

To be honest I don't think any of us could do the best buy employees job better. We'd be speaking gibberish... even though we know exactly what we are talking about. Then I'd be turning people away because I wouldn't be able to sell anyone junk.