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Fox Lawyers Try To Shut Down The "Why Files"
MarchingAnts writes: "According to this article on eSchoolNews.com, Fox lawyers are demanding that the University of Wisconsin close down its immensely popular science website "The Why Files" (which has been online for nearly five years) because it supposedly infriges on its trademark of "The X-Files" and could confuse viewers of the television show. An offer made by Fox to license "The Why Files" name to the University for an undisclosed fee has been rejected, and lawyers have now said they will start legal action seeking to cancel "The Why Files.""
Their trademark is "The X Files". Now, does that cover "The*[Ff]iles"? If I have a cofee stand called "The Z Cofee", do I have the right to sue anybody called "The Best Cofee" or "The Genuine Colombian Cofee"?
Homer: Look, daddy is buying stocks online...
Lisa: Dad! That's FOX!
Homer: SELL! SELL!
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
If UW already has "The Why Files" trademarked (which I think they do), then tough titty for Fox unless they already trademarked "The [a-Az-Z] Files." Which they didn't.
But of course, Fox has to whine like little babies since they aren't getting their way.
"WAAAH!!! I WANT UW'S DOMAIN NAME!"
Thus sprach DrQu+xum.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
First off Fox owns the "X-files" name and all derivations of it. Period. The law is the law and you must obey it at all times even if it is a law that you think was "bought" by special interests.
m l
hmm, xfm, the x-file-manager was Copyrighted in 1993 by Ove Kalkan - all rights reserved. http://man-pages.net/linux/man1/xfilemanager.1.ht
Does this constitute "prior art" ?
Let's simplify every damn copryight/domain/competition dispute since the past 2-3 years :
"EvilCorp tries to buy out LittleBiz, LittleBiz refuses, so EvilCorp just plain steals LittleBiz from the grips of their owners."
Sounds a hell of a lot like organised crime. If you don't shut up and take the money, _they_ shut you up and keep the money. Last I heard, gangsterism was still illegal, why should corporate gangsterism be any different ? Instead of sending armed thugs to your home, they send legal threats. The vehicles of destruction may be different, but the modus operandi are one and the same. Once again, I hope Fox eventually gets gang-raped by the little guys they crushed and swallowed. They're no better than Microsoft, in fact they're much sloppier than Gates' legal henchmen.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
X-windows?
The X-Box?
Windows XP File Manager?
Watch out Microsoft, Fox has your number.
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
With the declining ratins of the X-Files within the past 2 years, this may be just a ploy by Fox in order to boost the X-Files ratings via a publicity based case of Fox vs. "X Files Fan Club" or something.
One of the things to keep in mind is any unauthorized used of X Files (copywritten) items such as logo's, graphics, etc., may be in full violation if you don't have the prior consent of the owners. Its sort of like that warning message that comes up when you play a DVD or VHS movie, which we all ignore.
Sure it sounds as petty as all heck, but there has to be a bit more for the reasoning of Fox going after a school based fan club site which is not mentioned anywhere.
SpeedyGrl Files
360 degrees of Karma
...copying something from this whole Napster suit. Yea, I'm sure that the lawyers for Metallicops could find a reason to sue Fox for taking their idea.
Heh. Or not.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
http://www.xenu.net/archive/FBI/
Welcome to The H-Files, an archive of documents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation relating to L. Ron Hubbard and the Dianetics and Scientology movements which he founded. There are 638 pages ranging from 1940 to 1983. They are being transcribed now and will be included continuously.
Looks like the scientologists at FOX are going to have to sue xenu.net too!
The way I read the article, they offered to stop bothering the Why files site if the university paid money to FOX, not the other way around. Of course to me that shows they're completely in it for the loot--if they were willing to allow the whyfiles name to be used at all, they're not worried that it will confuse viewers into thinking it's related to the X files.
It's a common mistake among /.ers to assume that what applies to one type of intellectual property law applies to all. Nothing could be further from the truth.
More generally, scientists and engineers often make the mistake of thinking that you can look at specific laws and make generalizations from them to similar cases. This works fine in science and engineering. It's what science is all about, in fact. But it's not how law works.
There are no general principles in law, only the specifics of individual laws. Oh, sure, the motivations of lawmakers may cause different laws to seem to be based on the same principle, but you can't extrapolate from one law to another.
More directly relavant to IP law, patents != trademarks != copyrights != patents.
To take one simple example, trademarks cannot be selectively enforced. If you let some people get away with infringing your trademark (and I'm talking here about bona fide trademark infringements, and not the bogus type seen here in the Fox vs. UW case), you may find that you no longer have a trademark, against your will.
People often try to extrapolate, and thus reason that patents and copyrights also cannot be selectively enforced, but this is not so. Patents and copyrights can and are selectively enforced, and the fact that you did not enforce your patent or copyright against one infringer does not weaken it in the least.
Why should selective enforcement be allowed for patents and copyrights, but not for trademarks? No reason, as far as I can tell. There are no general principles at work here, only specific laws, which allow for selective enforcement of patents and copyrights, but not trademarks. QED.
Sorry to ramble on for so long, but it's a common mistake on /.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Well, Fox wouldn't exist without the Simpsons. It would have tanked around 1990 but for that one show. I think the show does have the network by the short hairs (or used to).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
See the list of "-Files" trademarks here.
It's stories like this that push the argument for mandatory death penalties against greedy bastards. Think about it: one of the FOX lawyers is sitting in his office, getting ready for a lunch meeting...maybe thinking about what he's going to do this weekend, when someone from the government steps in with a syringe. "Sorry sir." is the last thing he hears.
For the record, and to give backing to the claim that FOX are blood sucking pigdogs - the production company that produces The Simpsons (Gracie Films) want as little to do with FOX as possible. Their wars are well-known in the industry.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
While your second statement is *technically* correct, it only happened in one much-maligned U.S. Supreme Court case and that doctrine has *never* been applied in the First Amendment context. Do some research before you spout off, because you're certainly NAL.
--J
I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners. - Berke Breathed
Trademarks are directly related to the owner of the the trademarks. A trademark says I am responsible for this type of thing. You can't claim you're responsible in one case but not others.
A copyright says I worked on this thing. I can do whatever the hell I want with it.
A patent says I thought about this thing I'll tell you about it if you don't make any of these, but feel free to improve on it.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Zilog, the company that invented the Z-80 microprocessor, went through a phase of suing anyone who used the letter Z in their product name.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You could make a good deal of money with that idea. I can picture your slogan: Travel with the power of the underworld!
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
First off, it's not even a fan site. It's an entirely unrelated site that is all about science. I thought you couldn't enforce trademarks if they were in another realm of commerce?
Second, it's whyfiles.org. Not Y-Files.com. Not even whyfiles.com. Would anyone in his right mind think that this dilutes the X-Files trademark?
I don't know what Fox is smoking (apparently the cheap stuff), but I sincerely hope they don't manage to win this legal battle. That would be a sad day indeed.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
FOX has done this sort of thing many times before. They've tried to shut down all fan sites for The Simpsons, The X-Files, Millenium, and other shows they air. In many cases they go after sites that contain no infringing materials; sites that contain the name of a TV program, a list of characters, and an episode guide! While the government purports to offer it's citizens freedom of expression, corporate america is clearly of the opinion that no discussion can occur on any topic without their express permission.
Didn't really need /. just to tell me Fox are a bunch of slimeballs. This has been common knowledge for the past, oh, decade...
;-P
Lord only knows how a good show like The Simpsons managed to stay on Fox for so long... IIRC they even had an episode blasting Fox the way they attack everything else... I guess Fox is just asleep at the switch, either that or their legions of Simpsons fans have them by the short hairs.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
It has been found that private actors (individuals and companies) using the courts become government actions.
It would be nice if they had posted the letters, but I would guess that they are using the dilution act. Given that, the claim must fail since it's not a commercial site. There is not even banner advertising.
Fight Spammers!
As long as i get my weekly dosis of The Simpsons i don't care, really.
keep it simple.
See the USPTO's page for information regarding the mark in question:
http://tess.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=70 1a4n.2.1
Give a man a fish, he owes you one fish. Teach a man to fish, collect recurring licensing revenue for life.
Fox offered some money for the site name. It was refused and there is a valid site with users at the address currently. This is probably not a case of domain name squatting.
Therefore Fox decides to sue anyways.
Ummmm.... No.
"A witty saying proves nothing." -Voltaire
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Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
Does this mean I have to delete all the "X-Files" from my disk? xclock, xlogo, xcalc ...
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Doesn't this remind you a bit of Peanuts? Good ol' Charlie Brown, boy of common sense, has straight forward views on life, but is essentially bullied into doing whatever Lucy says (be it kicking a football or paying her 5 cent psychiatrist fee) through excessive child mumbo-jumbo/jargon. Lucy should be working for Fox, apparently.
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
There have been so many ?-files since the X-Files started that a claim of trademark dilution for anything other than X-Files might be accepted. There have been any number of Sci-Files, [A-W]-files and probably a few Y-files kicking about. You have to defend your trademark.
For example a patent on a horsless carriage might not be enough. You could patent a specific steam powered technology, vs a separate patent for infernal combustion engines.
Thus it is possible for someone else to to develop an independant system separate from the first system, and accomplish the same goals.
A famous case had to do with the reverse enginnering of the IBM Bios, which led to the first 100% IBM compatible PCs. the engineers only had a spec of what the inputs and outputs were, with no other data, and designed a bit of hardware the duplicated the result exactly. IBM sued, and lost.
Given that, i somehow doubt that NCR would have much success vs someone with a similar idea, 14 years after the fact, and sitting on their hands all the while.
It isn't like it was a secret.
BTW, IANAL, etc.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
wrong topic area, too many windows
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think that Fox is suing over that name because they plan to release a sequel to "X Files", with the name "Y Files" or "Why Files"!!! Think about it, could that be possible?
- Mike