Slashdot Mirror
More Fun With "For Dummies" Trademarks
tonescope wrote to us with a fun narrative from Oz about Corporate Standover Tactics for Dummies in which Octapod, a small non-profit arts group has done a fun job of cataloging the dialogue between them and IDG Books. In the same vein, check out our first story about this as well.
Which part of "law which requires the owner of a trademark to protect it against "erosion" and/or dilution" didn't you understand?
I understand that completely. What part of:
"The following shall not be actionable under this section:
...do IDG's legal council not understand? I agree that they must dilligently pursue any infringing use, but non-profits are explicitly excluded as are parodies and reporting.
The morons at Pegasus Mail demanded that I rename
my program "pmail" because they thought it was
confusingly similar to their product name. They
had an even weaker case, but unfortunately
because I can't afford a lawyer, said evil people
won. Grrr.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I wonder if the opinions of the /. readership would be different if a new company named O'rily published a booked called "Programming Perl" and it had a 2 humped camel on the cover.
Phrases I'd like to trademark:
We're the F in FU!
X for Syphilitic Monkeys (ie Quantum Field Theory for Syphilitic Monkeys)
Where would you like to go tonight?
Your place or mine?
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
Right. But to imply that it is a 'blatant infringement' when satire and parody are CLEARLY NOT INFRINGEMENTS is almost bullying.
They are required to defend their trademark WHEN IT IS BEING INFRINGED UPON. IT CLEARLY IS NOT.
They are required to protect their trademark, or lose it. If you check out the links at the bottom of the page, you'll run across some interesting, such as reference to a book that used "for dummies" before IDG did.
/. readers put up trademark bait for IDG?
Now, the trademark infringement doesn't seem to apply to non-commercial or parody sites. (Or Slashdot, since it's reporting about it.) However, IDG feels it neccessary to chase these people anyway. They're paying people to do this.
So, what would happen to their costs if all the
Credit certainly must given to IDG's lawyers for their politeness. However just because they are polite doesn't mean that one should simply acquiesce. Particularly when the lawyers are wrong in their beliefs about the alleged infringement.
Trademark law specifically excludes non-commercial use of trademarked words, as has been pointed out in other posts in this discussion. So while IDG's request was polite, it certainly was not reasonable. The website owners were clearly within their rights to refuse it.
If you are walking down the street and someone comes up to you and politely requests that you hand over you wallet and all your vauables, should you comply? Or would you be justified in telling them to get lost?
Ideology is for ideots.
. .would companies fight so hard to sell to so many dummies.
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Once a trademark holder is notified of infrigement, they must protect their trademark or the trademark can be lost. It's not really their choice. I just wonder why any laws protecting satire don't apply here?
Please excuse the ambiguity of my previous post. I was wavering betwixt humor and a real post. But I would like to clarify a couple of things:
1)I am not of the opinion that the "for dummies" trademark should have ever been granted in the first place. "...for dummies" is/was a relatively well used term prior to IDG's trademarking of it. As I said before, while not everyone was using the term, it was most certainly out there...so there's a prior art argument.
2) The real threat of IDG is not in the trademark. That is inconsequential, assume they do have a right to carry this trademark, and they don't have a legal right to infringe upon a non-profit (etc.) organization's ability to use such a term. That's all fine and good - but we're talking about the real world. As happens most often, Company A says to person B, "Take blah down!" Person B says, "Fuck off, I have the right to have blah up!" Company A says "Take it down or we'll sue you." Person B has to think VERY hard about whether or not they want to risk a small fortune to fight off Company A even though they know they're in the clear. It's the old - "do it or we'll bankrupt you in the process" routine.
It's not right...but it's the way things work.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
More than 200 years ago it was decided that parodies are covered by freedom of the press. IDG's legal skylarkings are analogous to ABC suing NBC whenever SNL does a fake millionare episode.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
The last bookstore I owned had heavy O'Reilly traffic. (It's nice to sell something that you can believe in - 98 of my top 150 selling computer titles were O'Reilly). Anyway-- I took the O'Reilly spoof t-shirt design (Porn in a Nutshell) from attrition.org, and made 100 copies to give to our regular customers. When the O'Reilly representative came round, I showed the shirt to her -- and she broke into hysterical laughter. So I gave her 5 of the t-shirts, and asked her to give one to Tim. I figured that if they had a problem, I'd hear about it. No calls, although a couple of her colleagues sent an email to thank me. Later that year, Tim O'Reilly himself dropped by during a party for Eric Raymond. The t-shirt was prominently displayed on the wall -- and not a complaint was heard. Draw your own conclusions.
Being a "victim" of an IDG cease and desist campaign, i would like to correct the notion that they only go after commercial, non-parody, "infringing" sites.
I used to host a webpage called "Unified Field Theory for XXXXX" (XXXXX being something i'm restricting from saying, due to "trademark" law). This was hosted at an EDU (non-commercial) site.
This was a CLEAR parody work using a modified version of an IDG book cover.
When i responded to the C&D request (threat) (for which i was given THREE days notice to comply, which is NOT a polite request in my view), I indicated that i considered my work to be covered under the non-commercial and parody clauses. IDG's lawyer responded that there was no such thing, and again demanded that i comply (again with a 3-day allowance).
When i yet again replied that this was clearly a parody work, i was told that since IDG's "...for dummies(tm)" series was itself a humorous entity, a "parody" claim could not be held.
This is utter and complete bullshit, but i, as many common low-life, am not ready, willing or able to put up a legal fight. (thus the site came down)
The whole point here is that IDG was trying to supress my clearly negative views about the entire "...for dummies(tm)" series. They can do so because they have a well-funded cadre of highly-paid legal bulldogs. It doesn't matter if they are in the right or not.
remember the "Radio Shack" Tandy holds the trademark rights to the word "Shack" issue? It is a clearly valid criticism of the PTO that they are willing to allow trademark of common language terms. These TM's should NOT be allowed to stand.
BTW, non-commercial alone isn't necessary. See the case of Penthouse magazine's parody "land's end" (iirc) catalog. It was in a commercial context, yet ruled non-infringing.
P.S. this legal bullying is one of the reasons i believe that a substantial portion of punitive damage awards should go toward funding the "public defenders" office instead of just paying off greedy lawyers and plaintiffs. This would help balance out the little guy's ability to stand up to corporate bullying)
I thought the whole reason why products have names like Coca-Cola or Kleenex is that by creating a nonsense word, the word isn't one in common use and so can only refer to the product in question. But "for dummies" hardly originated in 1991. In fact, if the phrase hadn't already been entrenched it would make no sense for IDG to use it in their titles. It's a pity that nobody has dared IDG to sue them.
IDG more or less invented the "for Dummies" phrase. It certainly wasn't in popular use before about 1991, when IDG started publishing the "for Dummies" series.
It is their unique distinguishing product name. Their trademark. And in order to retain ownership of the name, they are legally *required* to send cease-and-desist letters to everyone who titles their works using the "for Dummies" phrase.
Pick up one of those cheap wanna-be-an-author magazines down at the local bookstore. You'll find that three-quarters of the advertising is from companies protecting their trademark: Xerox telling writers to use the phrase "photocopy"; Kleenex telling writers to use the phrase "tissue"; and so on.
It's no different than if someone were to start offering "Red Hat BSD", "SUSE Windows" or the "Slashdot Porn: Sluts for Nerds. Stuff that creams ya!"
Anyway, it's stupid and irresponsible for Slashdot to be resurrecting this non-issue. IDG is doing what IDG *must* do, not what it wants to do. The law is written in a way that forces them into this position.
And by all appearances, they are most polite and patient. Give them a freaking break.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
It might be required by law, yet still be insane.
How many combinations of two words in a common language can I trademark? How many would I require to gain control over (if not how it is used now) how the langauage will develop?
Remember that language is used in forming exact thoughts. If you can not form certain new word combinations, you are restricted of forming an expression. This results in either finding a corresponding alternative expression or not finding a formula for the thought to be expressed as.
Well, if you have read 1984 you know instantly what I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be that bad, but it might still be pretty ugly. Like the fact that ILUVYOU victims are dummies, and it is a Virus for Dummies, yet we may not call it such! So we might not learn of it.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
"For Dummies" is a stupid series of books with a stupid title, IMO, but obviously successful for IDG. You can't tell me that people that made up a site or whatever entired "blah blah for Dummies" weren't inspired to do so by IDG's books.
English is a rich language. Certainly they could come up with something similar that wasn't infringing, like "Screenprinting for braindead titheaded fuckwits" and not have to worry about infringing on some trademark...
Looking over the actual website, it is just me, or is it also difficult for you too to contain sniggers at this whole thing?!
Their pursuit of 'blatant infringement upon IDGB's internationally protected trademark "For Dummies®"' (Perhaps it was the ® at the end?), not to mention the fact that they forced changes to a site about Irish Step Dancing, or that they 'constantly track the web' for 'illegal' occurrences of 'for dummies' sounds like an amusing PR disaster waiting to happen for IDG.
They give the example of hoover being a brand dilution. (In the US I hear a lot of people Vacuum instead of Hoover®). I don't see what problem having everyone think of your brand for something as generic as vaccum cleaners, or for that matter books. As long as it is easy to differentiate a genuine 'for dummies®' from a homage, then they should consider it voluntary brand building - especially from not for profit sites.
If 'For Dummies®' is the first thing I think about when I want an easy technical reference, and I know that those yellow IDG® books are the the originals, then guess what i'm going to buy? Since they are apparently spending so much effort and money building this brand, the name should only be a part of the mix that customers associate with them. If the Irish step dancing site had a yellow background with a sign® etc then perhaps we are coming closer to confusion.
It's not really about protecting us poor consumers from confusion, however - especially in this case, since you would have to view your customers with extreme contempt for their intellegence if they think everything contianing 'For Dummies' is part of their product line, or even a good substitute for what is in their product line.
I agree that if someone came into the technical books market with a 'for profit' product, or even something that was on sale for any kind of money, and it copied the visual branding aspects as well as the name, then they should have some right to stop it, to protect market share.
But treating customers with contempt, by implying their sheer stupidity, and by acting like a bully® in one of the principal forums where their brand equity matters, is both insensitive and stupid. The more people they harass about this on the internet, the faster the word is going to spread that these people are total arseholes.
So, I suggest that all us Dummies® exercise our market power and intellegence and go and buy something different in future when we need to learn or teach someone about something. Spread the word.
Apparently, IDG only has a case against for-profit organizations. Here's a quote from the page:
It seems that IDG was either unaware of this or felt that people's ignorance of the law or fear of litigation would allow their tactics to prevail.IDG's use of "phantom" trademarks may not be allowed. Phantom marks are those that contain elements unspecified at application time, like ".... for Dummies." Apparently trademark applicants are allowed only one trademark name per application.
I found this little tidbit in a USPTO newsletter here.
There are still a few questions. If IDG already had their application approved by the USPTO, it may be harder for "infringers" to defend against it, even with the court ruling. Also, IDG may have legitimate claims to specific titles like "The Internet for Dummies" or even just "For Dummies," but anything "for Dummies" seems right out. As the federal court says, such phantom marks do not serve the public good, since there are too many potential infringing variations.
I did a search on Melvyl, which searches all the UC's, and also Stanford and a couple other universities' libraries. I found three pre-IDG uses of "for dummies" in the title of a book.
;c28 cm.
Author: Sclar, Deanna.
Title: Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical
advisor. New York : McGraw Hill, c1976.
Author: Sclar, Deanna.
Title: Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical
advisor. Rev. ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1983.
Author: Winenger, Dwight.
Title: Music for dummies / Dwight Winenger. Desert Hot Springs, Ca. :
Minuscule University Press, c1981.
Someone ought to buy the rights to "Music for Dummies" and use it for a music web site. I'm sure it would really piss off IDG, since it isn't going to be good for public relations to sue someone who was using their "trademark" before they were.
I found one book using "for Dummies" published in 1997. I'm curious what IDG has done about this. My guess is that it's non-commercial, and so out of their reach.
Author: Morebeck, Nancy Justus.
Title: Census for dummies : a quick guide "by example" to use indexes,
soundex, CDs and the census ; includes a soundex coding card /
by Nancy Justus Morebeck. Vacaville, CA : N. Morebeck, c1997.
Description: [7] leaves : chiefly ill.
Notes: Title from cover.
What's interesting is who is the author of the Auto Repair for Dummies published back in 1976:
1. Sclar, Deanna.
Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor.
New York : McGraw Hill, c1976.
2. Sclar, Deanna.
Auto repair for dummies / Deanna Sclar ; Don Donesley, technical advisor.
Rev. ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1983.
3. Sclar, Deanna.
Buying a car for dummies / by Deanna Sclar. Foster City, CA : IDG Books,
c1998.
Series title: --For dummies.
She's now writing for IDG.