Now here’s an interesting development. According to Second Life resident Vint Falken in a post today (Link – may be dead), the SL Exchange website claims that Coca-Cola is releasing their trademark for use by merchants inside Second Life.

Apparently after having some content intended for the VirtualThirst competition (reference – reLink) removed from the SL Exchange site, Falken explains the subsequent series of events that led to the release:

I was to supply proof we could actually do so: ‘If you have permission to use the Coca-Cola trademark, please provide us with proof and we will reactivate your listings.’
…
I contacted C.C. Chapman – one of the person I met at the Virtual Thirst party – to ask if he could sort things out. He was as surprised by the news as I was – and probably worried too – and said he would try and sort things out.

June 22, SLexchange sends out the following: ‘ We have spoken to Coca-Cola and they have released their trademark to SL Merchants. Therefore, any of your items that were disabled on June 7, 2007 have been retrieved….’*

As C.C. Chapman appears to have been involved (and that’s entirely believable), and as this move is essentially the most pragmatic thing any company can do in this day and age, I suspect this is on the up and up.

I went looking for an announcement on the SL Exchange website, but unfortunately didn’t find anything. If something more official than a blog post relaying information through a second party shows up, I’ll update this entry as appropriate.