It's all about a local dealer loosing servicing revenue and being nasty I would imagine, so you should be fine
McDonalds have sued other cafe owners whose names were McDonald and used it in the cafe name. And won. Its pointless trying to fight it unless you have bigger pockets than VAG. I believe Aprilia and other companies have used the same tactics.
Unfortunately VAG want to protect "the brand" and thereby protect their investment in their dealership chain. That's business for you. They also have no control over what any "unauthorised" dealer/service centre does. Imagine if some rogue retailer setup business under the brand name and then ripped a load of people off? It brings the brand into disrepute. This is what they are trying to avoid. In a similar vein, there have been a few dealers who have dropped Ducati because they made too many demands on them, such as refitting the showroom fixtures and fittings to be in line with the corporate look, dedicating more space, etc, etc. As for this website? It's a commercial operation. Rob has never denied that as he runs Triumph, Honda, etc forums using the same template; that's his business model. He's making money from advertising and subscriptions. Will they come after this website? I don't know. It's a balance of gain vs loss. There's a lot of good information here, but there's also a lot of negative threads and attitudes (that are not necessarily specific to this site!) that may be seen as detrimental to the brand. Some may remember the old days of Ducatisti (that occupied this space previously) and how that folded due to a "concerned dealer" who threatened legal action about comments made on the website. It wouldn't take much to cause enough trouble to get it closed down, not just because it uses the word "Ducati" in the url and the site name without authorisation.
Ducati made the UKMOC change its logo to remove the 'O' with the slash as this is copywrite. However the double line font is not
Negative threads and attitudes? You mean any opinions that you personally do not agree with of course
Problem is from Ducati's point of view there is a huge difference between "The Ducati forum" and "The Ducati owners forum"
Same for the Scottish Ducati Club who are also an affiliated club. Ducati made them change the eye of the lion rampant in the logo because it incorporated the slashed "O". They must have been using a magnifying glass because it was tiny.
They also made the DSC change theirs to remove the specific Ducati type-face (Univers) in the logo. They also made Ducati Club Mainz in Germany change their logo as it featured a silhouette of a woman that was quite suggestive. They also made the Italian club Peco Nero remove the beer from their logo. it's all in the rules of being an official club, and part of maintaining the required standards. The difference is that official clubs have to sign up to the 40-something page terms and conditions so they understand the rules of use. Anyone creating something unofficial and yet still using the name is not subject to the same rules and standards, and that's when the problems could occur. I'm sure that the rules for commercial organisations are far more complicated.
There's plenty of mud slinging, name calling and general arsehole-ness on this board, just like any other forum or social media platform. As I said, it's not exclusive to this forum but is a human phenomenon; people are arseholes. The difference is whether Ducati want to be associated with it or not.
Tim is a member of pretty much all the Ducati related forums, so this is nothing special, but the rules come from VAG as @El Toro says.
Just been talking to one on another thread this forum is by far the best for such behaviour - even people who no longer own the brand are daily active members, arseholes or otherwise
