IkeaHackers: Ikea makes fan site remove all adverts

Ikea has made IkeaHackers – a fan site featuring ideas for customizing the company’s furniture – remove all adverts.

The founder of IkeaHackers.net said she had been issued with a “cease and desist” letter in March, in which Ikea had said the site’s name had infringed upon its intellectual property rights.

An agreement was reached in which IkeaHackers could keep its domain, “without commercial elements”.

An Ikea representative said other sites using its name “creates confusion”.

Jules Yap, a blogger living in Malaysia who started IkeaHackers in 2006, wrote in a blogpost: “Needless to say, I am crushed.

“I don’t have an issue with them protecting their trademark but I think they could have handled it better.

“I am a person, not a corporation. A blogger who obviously is on their side. Could they not have talked to me like normal people do without issuing a C&D [cease and desist]?”

Jules Yap added that she had agreed to Ikea’s demand to remove advertising because she did not have “deep enough pockets to fight a mammoth company in court”.

Fans of the site, which Jules Yap says attracts about 180,000 visitors per week, expressed their outrage at the decision on social media sites.