The Pillsbury Doughboy vs. Engineers

Anonymous Coward writes: "Just when you thought things could not get more stpid. Salon is reporting in this story that Pillsbury is sending cease-and-desist letters this week to universities and Sun Microsystems among others ordering engineers to stop holding what the doughboy company considers illegal "bake-offs." A bake-off is slang for testing software against protocols. This article tells the story. Xray crystallographers who use the "shake and bake" software better watch out. They're probably next."

Comments

How...

[griffjon]

can a company be so mindbogglingly stupid? I cannot conceive of a non-comedic board meeting with the legal team to decide to pursue 'bake-off' as a trademark under infringement. Expecially right now. I would've expected it in mid-99 when they could've used their legal team to sap some dollars out of the tech boom [1], but trying it now is squeezing water from a stone.

Of course, this is from a company that asks you to sign up for their spam with a damn popup on their front page, so. Surf their brands to see what you should boycott. Lay off the haagen-dazs, green giant, old el paso, and of course, pilsbury.

[1] Of course, it would've been stupid then for the same reasons it is now, but I could at least see a good corp-think argument for it.

Yes, We should

[Calle Ballz]

excerpt from www.pillsbury.com, link to site is here

[begin contact info]
Contact Us
Before you contact us, we'd like you to review our policies on privacy and suggestion and idea submissions.

Phone
1(800)767-4466
8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Time
Monday through Friday

Email
Click here to contact Pillsbury about product and technical questions. Kids, get your parent's permission first!

Write
The Pillsbury Company
2866 Pillsbury Center
Minneapolis, MN 55402 USA


[end contact info]

if they have a problem with that.... good =)

Re:Time for a boycott.

[Fishstick]

Undoubtedly, this is the reason for thier actions.

Someone at Pillsbury was probably shocked and dismayed when doing a search on "bake-off" and getting all these hits that have nothing to do with proper use of the Pillsbury trademark.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. *shakes head in dismay*

Also, there is this intersting IETF mail archive entry about this very issue from last November. It quotes text from RFC1025(Sept 1987) --

There were a few times when this testing was focused, bringing together all known implementations and running through a set of tests in hopes of demonstrating the N squared connectivity and correct implementation of the various tricky cases. These events were called "Bake Offs".

So the term has obviously been in use for quite a long time. I'll bet what is driving this now is all these TCP testing-related websites getting higher page ranks than Pillsbury's official bake-off contest stite. It is causing consumer confusion! Too fscking bad!

Does that make it illegal to "poke" people?

[amirboy2]

am i in legal danger?

Re:Article gets it wrong.

[RedWizzard]

"Kleenex" is very much a registered and protected trademark, despite the yabberings of the uninformed.

An article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology states (references in the quote removed):

It is important to keep in mind that trademarks are inherently adjectival and must remain distinctive to retain their protected status. While many formerly distinctive marks have made a transition into common, generic nouns ("Kleenex" for "tissue") or even verbs (e.g., "to (make a) Xerox"), this metamorphosis, when complete, sacrifices the trademark to the public domain.

The thing to remember is that it will take a court case to determine whether that metamorphosis from trademark to generic term is complete. AFAIK for Kleenex that case has not happened, and Kimberly-Clark are still vigorously defending the trademark. A list of trademarks that have become generic can be found here. Kleenex is not on it.

Bake Off

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun can call it the "pillsbury fuck off" instead.

Article gets it wrong.

[isaac]

"Kleenex" is very much a registered and protected trademark, despite the yabberings of the uninformed.

To test this, I propose the author attempt to bring to market a line of facial tissues called "Kleenex", and see exactly how long it takes for him to hear from the Kimberly-Clark corporation. Indeed, even if he were marketing Kleenex-brand Bowling Balls, I suspect he'd hear from K-C. This is such a stupid myth that would never be propagated but for poor fact-checking.

-Isaac

Dough-Boy cakes

[doublem]

This has been posted to the Pilsbury http://www.mealtimeideas.com/bulletinboard/

For those of you who don't know, Pilsbury is sending cease and desist orders to a variety of organizations who use the term "bake-off."

The most recent round of such letters went to computer companies who use the term for a state of software testing. Salon has an article about it online. http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2001/01/19/pillsbury /index.html

Your local school could be next!

Anyway, my computer geek background and my considerable cooking skills inspired me to come up with the following recipe for Dough-Boy cakes.

First, you start with a basic pound cake or Mazitpan recipe. If using a pound cake recipe, you need to add flour to create a very dense dough.

Roll the dough into circles for the head, an oval for the chest and smaller ovals for the legs and arms. If you're feeling creative you can even make the hat and add some food coloring.

The more sadistic among us can shape the head with skeleton features to indicate a cooked Dough-Boy who met a gruesome end, as in the picture here: http://members.tripod.com/laffs/images/Doughboy.jp g

Serve and enjoy.

http://www.matthewmiller.net

Hormel's position on the word SPAM®

[yerricde]

Here's what Hormel has to say about SPAM® luncheon meat vs. "spam":

We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

Rob, please lose the "can of SPAM luncheon meat" icon for topic spam.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?

Re:Should we write Pillsbury

[sjames]

So should we contact Pillsbury about this or do we even have a right to? Are we even qualified since we are all not lawyers and we do not have the "all" the facts? I ask this because some upbraded my posting of Nintendo contact info in an earlier discussion this past week. Some did not like the idea of an executive get slash-dotted by all the people writing and sending email.

Many of us (including me) are not lawyers. That precludes our practice of law. We are still members of the society that Pillsbury operates within, and thus are entitled to moral and ethical opinions. We have every right to voice our opinions, and to call upon fellow citizens for action (such as boycotts and letter/email writing). Pillsbury may listen or not as it chooses. It can ignore the threat of a boycott or take it seriously as they choose.

I believe that posting corperate contact info and using it is the right thing to do. That right stops at posting home phone numbers and making harassing calls at 3A.M.

Sorry, WWI. Aspirin trademark ceded at Versailles!

[isaac]

Sorry, Bayer didn't lose their Aspirin trademark in WWII - it was actually stripped from them (at least within the US, France, UK, and Russia) by the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919 at the end of WWI!

Another trademark was stripped from Bayer in that treaty - Heroin.

See about.com's aspirin page.

-Isaac

So, what's next?

[TDScott]

The fabulous Baker Boys?

Sherlock Holmes (who lived at Baker Street)?

Jerry Rafferty (who played "Baker Street")?

Kevin Bake-on?

Who knows? Lawyers know no bounds...

The solution is clear

[jayhawk88]

I don't think the phrase "b4k3-0ffz" is copyrighted yet.

fresh dough boy

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmm...

Re:Details?

[sjames]

I'm sure you're wrong about the case having no merit

Actually, trademarks only apply to other uses in the same trade. So they will first have to show that the geek bake-off is in fact trade (believable), and that the trade is in food service (never in a million years).

I'm sure Pillsbury's lawyers know very well that the claim is absurd at best and are relying on intimidation to do what the law won't.

Personally, I think lawyers who participate in that sort of intimidation should be disciplined by the Bar or the courts. It's not much better than robbing a bank w/ a toy gun.

Reality catches up to satire...

[JanneM]

Some time ago, this text circulated arount the net. It was funny then - how times change...

It's all Netscape's fault

[Raul Acevedo]

After all, they invented web cookies.
----------

Time for a boycott.

[doublem]

Dear God in Heaven, PLEASE let this be a joke. This is a hoax, right? Pillsbury isn't REALLY this stupid and asinine, is it? Their lawyeres aren't really this insane are they????????

I'll just have to boycott them. Whose with me?

Come on, you know being boycotted by a group that probably makes up 40% of their business would hurt the suckers, and it's not like boycotting the MPAA because there are a LOT of alternatives to Pillsbury products!

Let's go to the bulletin board on their web site and post what we think of them, shall we??

http://www.matthewmiller.net

Stupidity par excellance.

[chris_sawtell]

They are just doing to get World-Wide publicity for free, and all you dotty slashers have fallen for it, hook line and sinker.

Ask Slashdot Lawyers:

[perdida]

Any LAWYERS in the house?

If so what on earth are you doing about this?

Lawyers follow money, it's true. But lawsuits like these are so widely percieved as absurd that I don't see how so many lawyers are taking the risk of bringing up these cases.

Please inform me! Is this similar to what can often happen in technical fields, when some buzzword or management strategy breezes through the magazine circut like a typhus epidemic, causing thousands of lawyers to chase trademark, copyright and patent cases all at once?

Or is there some movement in lawyers' organizations to protect people's rights, something like a jurisprudential EFF?

turn pillsbury in for pirating.

[small_dick]

Finally, a use for anonymous cowards.

All you ACs out there, go down to the public or school library and sneak your way onto a browser.

Wear a disguise, since they all have time lapse video now. Shave your legs so they are smooth and sexy, and wear a cheerleader outfit or something. Practice singing "We got spirit, yes we do, we got spirit, how about you".

Email an anonymous tip to the FBI, Microsoft and the SPI (or whatever that place is) stating that you are a sysadmin for Pillsbury, and your boss made you do 250 illegal installs of Office and NT last Wednesday in the Legal Dept. of the Pillsbury Corporate Offices.

Hee, Hee, Hee.