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

Dear NAI...

[shr3k]

Dear NAI,

We believe *you* are infringing on *our* trademark. Our ability to "sniff" is our livelihood. Not to mention, we hold prior art for any kind of "sniffing."

We will see you in court.

Sincerely,

Drug-Sniffing Canines

Road to nowhere

[unixwin]

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

Redikuliss

[orthogonal]

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.'

That's ridiculous! It would be like, I dunno, Ralph Lauren suing the U.S. Polo Association, claiming that Polo clothes owned the name of the sport.

Oh, wait, Ralph Lauren did do that.

Of course, he didn't win.

Oh wait, he did win:

Kinda stupid.

[pmz]

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?

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®?

-

Sniffer has always been brand name

[Cy Guy]

Sniffer was a commercial product from then Network General and came out at least by 1987. But they called it "The Sniffer" , which seems to have more of a brandname like sound to it.

And another Usenet post shows that at least as early as 1994 they were quite conscious of its growing use as a generic term and tried to deter it.

Maybe they should have been more proactive in stopping it use as a generic term, but it is a fine line to walk for companies since getting to be the "Kleenex" of your market niche makes you the defacto standard.