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Asterix and Mobilix Redux
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).
They can hardly be accused of typo-cybersquatting if the O is two rows up and a bit right from the M. Perhaps spoken errors could come into play, but this sounds like quite a petty case. And who the fuck would mistake a PDA site for a Cartoon site?
How about Crispix cereal? Sounds too much like what would be the name of the guy in Asterix' village who always overcooks the roast boar.
Epix image hosting on eBay? The lady in the village who needs to use an Epliady (not hard to find in any French village for that matter.
Appendix? Can't use that one either. That is the guy who keeps trying to add extra verses to Cacaphonix's tales.
Phoenix, Arizona? Better change your name, you copyright-violating town.
how long before they make us pry the '8' key off of all our keyboards?
-- OMFG = Oh My Floatse Goatse
America, home of the free (and of DMCA, RIAA etc)
But Mobilix is (well, was) a mobile phone company around here. Owned by France Telecom as far as I recall. Now it is called Orange.
Could this not have influence on this issue, i.e. that the name has been previously used without Obelix and his Gaul friends objecting?
Just a thought!
virve
--
This just underlines the injustice of the courts. I suspect that it was as much decided on who knew who and who had the biggest pockets - always a big factor in a trial.
Life would be much more pleasant if there were no lawyers.
Euh, nice comparison (not!). Mickey and Goofy are cool, I like them, but you can't possible compare them to Asterix and Obelix. FYI, it is a (apparently not so) well known fact that Asterix and Obelix have add more to the knowledge of classical history then classical education. A lot of things in the strip (not cartoon) are genuine. You can actually learn stuff from Asterix. So, I'd say go out and read some.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
It's 2003 AD, and all the Internet is occupied by the powerful IP empire. All? No, a little village of indomitable freedom fighters still hold out, assisted by their druid Getafix's magic potion, freenet.
Withdraw the domain name? French don't control the .org registry I think; all they need to do is sell the domain name for a nominal amount "to help them recover legal costs" to someone not based in France who will continue to host the service.
Why should the French care? What if Obelix was similar to an ancient mythical Hindu character (to pick an unlikely case at random) that's been around a lot longer; it would be foolish to suggest Obelix stop being used if that occurs; (especially as far as I can tell Obelix is a play on Obelisk (those Menhir things he makes)).
By this argument Mobilix should be left alone even if it is similar, and who cares if the French get confused, what about the rest of the world. Will we stop everything if we can find one nation that has some citizens that might confused by it?
An offender because of a word indeed!
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Sometimes you just have to be ashamed of your compatriots. Funnily enough, the owners of the Asterix & Obelix trademark didn't try anything against the french spatial agency when it named one of its first commercial space rockets after the comic book hero (that was in the 60s, IIRC)
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
Only a hell of a lot funnier than that stupid mouse and dog. I'd say a better comparison is Homer and Bart. Mickey and Goofy start to lose their humor once you reach a certain age. Asterix works on so many more levels...
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Sent via: Via Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested
Re: Re: Infringements of AT&T Copyrights and Trademarks
I write as attorney for AT&T Telecommuncations Corporation.
As you are, no doubt, aware, AT&T owns the rights to ATT, AT&T, or anything relating to or sounding vaguely like the phoenetic sound of "at." These rights are protected by numerous copyrights trademarks.
We have recently learned that you have have been using the words "at", "attack", "attachment", and any and all words beginning with "AT" in your book entitle the "Dictionary" Your addition of these items in your book is an infringement of AT&T's rights.
Based upon the foregoing, we hereby demand that your confirm to us in writing within ten days of receipt of this letter that: (i) you have removed all infringing materials from your book; and (ii) you will refrain from adding any similar infringing material in the future.
The foregoing is without waiver of any and all rights of AT&T Telecommunications Corporation, all of which are expressly reserved herein.
Very truly yours,
[Attorney]
checking for libvirus... no
ERROR, libvirus.so not found, terminating
Let's call the whole thing off!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
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.
If we Slashdot them, they'll surrender!
In Denmark we up until recently had a major mobile-phone provider with the name Mobilix. They have now switched their name to the more international Orange, but I never heard of them having any problems arising from their usage of a name that could have been taken from the Asterix-comic. This is even more peculiar, as they probably must have intended for the association to be made: Asterix is quite famous in Denmark, and the company constantly played on its French ancestry.
In France the keyboars are azerty, where the 'm' is closer to the 'o'. The 'o' occupies the same position as on qwerty, the 'm' is to the right of the 'l' (where ':' and ';' are on qwerty).
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So, the owner of a hypothetical site www.ogeefy.com could be sued by Disney, and they'd win?! I can't believe that.
This is actually quite ironic since allmost all names in the Asterix comic series are derived from real words (in French). Asterix comes from 'asterisque' (the * character), Obelix from 'obelisque' (a vertical monument, like a pillar), idefix (the dog) from 'idée fixe' (difficult to translate, something like an unchangeable opinion), assurancetourix (the chief IIRC) from 'assurance touts risques' (an insurance for all damages), etc ...
And now they sue somebody cause a word they use looks like one of the names of their characters. It would be funny if it wasn't so stupid.
"Son, in a sporting event, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get" - Homer J. Simpson
idefix (the dog) from 'idée fixe' (difficult to translate, something like an unchangeable opinion)
In the English-language version, his name is "Dogmatix", which means basically the same thing.
assurancetourix (the chief IIRC)
He's "Vitalstatistix" in the English version.
The great thing about Asterix is that new punning names are made up for every language that the stories are translated into. I've even seen a Welsh-language Asterix book; my father, who is a Welsh speaker, confirmed that the names were still puns in Welsh.
My favourite Asterix name is a Roman soldier I saw in one book called "Poisonus Oystus". Inspired.
-Stephen
Asterix has always been among my favorites. I have all the albums, and I started collecting when I was 8 years old. It is a great cartoon, and there is even a story about how money corrupts, in which the Romans send in a guy to buy all the bautas the Gauls can produce. Obelix makes bautas, and suddenly the village gets industrialized, the villagers get rich and things start going really wrong.....
They should start reading Asterix too.
I found this e-mail address: contact@albert-rene.com
I told them I would never buy an album again unless they drop this suit immediately.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
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:
... and this one I didn't understand for years ...
Vitalstatistx was the (rather fat) chief of the village.
Dogmatix was Asterix's dog.
Unhygenix was the village fishmonger.
Fullyautomatix was the village blacksmith.
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.
info@asterix.tm.fr
"The ironing is delicious" - Bart Simpson
AC comments get piped to
I can totally see how a mobile phone could be mistaken for a good natured fat guy who likes to beat up romans and eat wild boar.
</sarcasm>
When will the insanity end? Mobilix, despite being in a totally different market, gets the shaft, but Lindows, which was intentionally named in order to draw in Windows customers, is OK?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
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.
Not sure I can agree. I've lived in French-speaking countries (admittedly France has not been among them) and a vowel surrounded by stressed syllables (the first and last syllables in these words take the stress) is elided to neutrality to my ear. I just tried it out with a real live French colleague and she agrees - only when she pronounced the words at deliberately (and unnaturally) slow speed was the difference audible.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS