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Asterix and Mobilix Redux

Posted by michael on from the cartoons-and-mobile-unix-are-nearly-the-same dept.

eguaj writes "I thought the "Obelix vs. Mobilix" case was over, and that the Mobilix web site had definitely won in the first instance, but this morning I saw this mail , on the linux-laptop mailing list, stating that 'Les Éditions Albert René' went into appeal and they managed to overturn the first decision, and now the Mobilix.org site will have to withdraw his domain name, pay the compensation fee, etc. Mobilix.org is a web site dedicated to Linux/Unix on mobile devices (laptop, pda, cell. phones), and they ruled that "Mobilix" was too much similar to "Obelix" and that people could take one for the other." For Americans: Asterix and Obelix are well-known French cartoon characters (think: Mickey and Goofy).

6 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Re:For Americans... by PeDRoRist · · Score: 2, Informative
    Asterix works on so many more levels..
    Well, a bit less since the death of R. Goscinny, IMO.
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  2. Re:Obligatory Frog Bashing by rasteri · · Score: 3, Informative

    Asterix was aimed at adults with an extremely corny sense of humour who liked the occasional bad joke (you know, the kind of jokes that are so bad that they're good). The beano was aimed at 10 year old kids.

  3. Re:Go to Russia by bartjan · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is not a case in France, but one in Germany, started by a german lawyer against a german company.

  4. Re:All names in Asterix and Obelix resemble real w by beanyk · · Score: 3, Informative

    When the stories were translated into English, they changed some of the names -- asterisk and obelisk are valid English words too, so they stayed the same, but many of the other characters got renamed so the (awful) puns would still work. For example:

    Vitalstatistx was the (rather fat) chief of the village.

    Dogmatix was Asterix's dog.

    Unhygenix was the village fishmonger.

    Fullyautomatix was the village blacksmith.

    ... and this one I didn't understand for years ...

    Getafix was the village druid (who cooked up the magic potion for our heroes).

    Lots more names, but those are the main ones that changed in English, I believe.

  5. Actually... by PeDRoRist · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...assurancetourix (the chief IIRC)...
    Actually, Assurancetourix is the lame bard, always trying to sing, and always knocked out by the blacksmith, Cetautomatix ("C'est automatique": That's automatic), before he gets a chance to. The Chief is named Abraracourcix, which is derived from a french idiomatic expression ("A bras raccourcis") meaning "violently" (as in attacking someone violently). A possible word by word translation would be "with shortened arms", which means nothing, and is completely off-topic
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  6. Re:Something strikes me as not quite right here by tempfile · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's what I remember from 10th grade law class:

    In Germany, the loser of a criminal case can always call appeal court. Because there is no jury, the judge makes decisions alone (advised by two "Schöffen" in some areas of criminal law) and therefore, esp. in cases like this, the decision is strongly flavoured by his personal opinion which can of course vary between courts.

    In this example, the judge obviously deemed the lower court's decision bullshit and made a different one. The importance of precedent decisions is much lower in Germany than in the US, and as long as the decision is backed by material law (German principle of law which leaves more room for interpretation than positive law), it's valid.

    When the appeal case is lost, however, it's often difficult to appeal again at the BGH.