NAI Sending "Sniffer" C&D Letters

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?"

Comments

when will they learn?

[pigscanfly.ca]

never threaten students & or professors doing research , it just creates bad blood and pisses the public off . We already expect companies to go after eachother , leave the academics out of it.

excellent!

[Fux the Pengiun]

Why, wouldn't you know it, IAAIPL (I am an IP lawyer)! Sadly, yes, this is enforceable. "Sniff" is too broad a term to trademark, but "sniffer" is certainly not. Check findlaw.com's take on trademark dilution. NAI believes these's peoples' use of the term "sniffer" dialates their trademark.

However, I think in this case they've gone too far. There's a C&D letter they also sent to the Children's Television Workshop after the Sesame Street producers gave Snuffleupagus HIV last year as part of a bid to raise kids' awareness of AIDS. Apparently NAI didn't want their trademark associated with wherever Snuffleupagus was keeping his "sniffer"

Re:excellent!

[Alsee]

I personally use the term sniffer in a generic sense, and I've never even heard of the Network Associates product before today. What is the standard for determining that a term is or has become generic? To get an objective measure I just browsed google results, and while Network Associates has the number one hit, there are five more generic uses of "sniffer" in a computer data sniffing context before the next Network Associates hit (yes, I was careful not to count things like fish sniffer, I didn't even count JavaScript browser sniffers).

In general it looks to me that the term sniffer is used less than 50% of the time as Sniffer® and more than 50% of the time to mean generic computer data sniffing. Doesn't that mean they've already lost any claim on it, just like Asprin® and Kleenex®?

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C&D signed by...

[Blob Pet]

Beverly Garrard
Worldwide Trademark Manager
Legal Affairs

Judging by her title, and the fact that the company had allocated such a position, it looks like somone's trying to justify her existance.

Re:is this a JOKE??

[Losat]

"it is not even a computer-term!"

That's exactly why it could be trademarked. A trademark must not be "merely descriptive" of a product or service. For example, Apple is a fine trademark for a computer.

However, I've never heard of Computer Associates' Sniffer brand, but I've long seen the term packet-sniffer used to describe network monitor programs generically. I do indeed consider it a "computer-term" and a generic one at that. Apparently the USPTO doesn't, which is not in the least bit surprising to me.

Re:Sniffer has always been brand name

[bill_mcgonigle]

It surprised me, but you're right. I did a by-year search of Google Groups, and the use of Sniffer for a network packet capture program wasn't around, at least on Usenet, until about '86.

There was an expert system debugging tool developed at MIT in '81 with the name Sniffer, though.

"Sniffer" as in information detector? 1946

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Checking with the OED, they have a 1946 usage for a "sniffer" that was used to locate illicit radio transmissions. Its use as a name for a flow-through detector for continuous measurement of exhaust gases, contamination, etc. goes back to 1945 or earlier.

It's a generic name for a non-destructive detection device.