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NAI Sending "Sniffer" C&D Letters

Posted by timothy on from the zealous-lawyers dept.

RayMarron writes "It seems that NAI's IP lawyers have been billing some hours recently by sending nastygrams asking companies/individuals to stop using their trademarked term 'Sniffer.' Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation has received one. The full text is posted on his news server, and I'm sure one of our readers will post it here. Or visit news.grc.com, grc.news and grc.news.feedback groups. A student at Stanford received one as well and forwarded it to the faculty to handle. Both Gibson (relating a conversation with his IP attorneys) and Stanford's reply seem to agree that 'sniffer' is too generic a term to be a viable trademark and can't be effectively enforced. Is there an IP lawyer in the house?"

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Road to nowhere by unixwin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Differently seen companies chasing their tails in copyright infringments,
    trade protocol violations and intellectual property rights
    are generally the ones which are going to fall pretty soon.
    Short on cash and not being able to earn/fund the millions they were used to in the dotgone era they are metamorphosing into scavengers and opportunists ....
    SCO is a shining example

    The crummy economy is bringing out the best in a lot of Companys, their legal team thinks, "we are getting irrelevant (as a team) , lets think up something to make some money and make sure we dont' get laid off," "hmmm... patent # 5551212 seems to be worth looking into"
    and there starts their Road to Hell
    Easy money (or so they think) ,lot of publicity (for sure) and a lot of hits on their website ,
    so there's a new concept for you
    the legal team is now the marketing team

    --
    -- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
  2. Kinda stupid. by pmz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The letter at grc.com constantaly spells "sniffer" as "SNIFFER(R)". How can the two be confused? I've heard "sniffer" for years without any mention of Computer Associates. If I saw "SNIFFER(R)", then there's no confusion that it is probably a product of some kind, but confusing "sniffer" simply doesn't make sense (it's a generic term for software that sniffs--it's a verb, too!--packets from a network transmission).

    By the way, from the letter: "This includes, but is not limited to, the use of "Sniffer" in any meta tags, source code, key words, domain names, glossaries, indexes and the like associated with your web site(s)."

    This is simply assinine. Source code?

    --
    Healthcare article at Kuro5hin