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Google to be Sued Over Name?
WK writes "Now that Google's IPO is running, the company is on the verge of being sued by the family of Professor Edward Kasner who invented the word 'Googol' to describe a very big number. The great-niece of Kasner who was 4 years old at the time her uncle died says that although Google has brought attention to the name, it has not brought attention to Kasner's work. Google was not using the concepts, but just capitalizing on the name."
Give me a frigging break! Had "google.com" sucked rocks you wouldn't be saying a word.
Now that google.com is just about to IPO you come crawling out of the wood work.
Go back home...
-mb
"googol" and "google.com" aren't even spelled the same! Gimme a break.
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
Is everyone asleep - this lady is just greedy!
I'm sorry but this is fucking retarded. Why would anyone think it would be okay to sue a company named Google for using a possible variant of the un-trademarked word Googol to describe a business that creates a data searching system? If there is a connection, why doesn't dictionary.com show one in the google definition? I could see perhaps a case if Google was called Googol, but this appears to be nothing more than a cash grab by a family of broke twits. Besides, the guy didn't invent the word! His 9 year old nephew did! From that link: The american mathematician Edward Kasner once asked his nine-year-old nephew to invent a name for a very large number, ten to the power of one hundred; and the boy called it a googol.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I think the niece has clearly indicated that money is more important than her uncle's name and reputation...
No?
Ok, nothing to see here, move along.
How the fuck do you invent a word.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Google is searching through a very big number of webpages! Don't you all see? :)
than if I named my company "One Hundred Billion?" (raises pinky finger to corner of mouth)
Can you get a copyright/trademark on a number?
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
So instead of having her father's name attached to a hugely successful web search engine she'd rather have it attached to some lawsuit that is going to make her family look like a bunch of assholes once the media gets wind of it.
Good one!
Danger, Tim Beauchamp! Danger!
As wel all know, potentially large sums of money can put a deceased loved one to rest. Why doesn't Google solve it creatively? Add a small line of text with a link that states what a googol is, with a tribute to Kasner, his work and his other achievements? The man and his work have been recognized, the family doesn't get a cent and everyone, except those greedy bastards, is happy.
Hate me!
Its really terrible what some people will do for money.. they have curiously abstained from even raising the issue until now, after the IPO, when they will get the most press and probably win the largest sum (if they win at all).
Does anyone think its the slightest bit innovative to give a name to a very big number? I think this is just a publicity scam capitalizing on the coming IPO. Google's lawyers should have to trouble with this one.
At what point are people -- rational people-- going to get together and form a coalition to bring about a bloodless coup, lift the Democrats and Republicans from office, wipe clean the slate of stupid laws and ridiculous political/legal traditions, form a new American government starting from the foundation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and finally make it so that bullshit like this is the exception rather than the norm? Good God, the nation's gone absolutely ape-shit. When's the revolution, and how can it be brought about without further bloodshed? Ridiculous lawsuits like this are just a symptom of how detached from reality the US has gotten.
I'm good and sick of this "lawyerocracy" we have here. I'd love to see a "geekocracy".
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
...stupid... frivilous... lawsuits... urge to kill... RISING...
"In 1955 he died and much later a search engine called Google was born. His relatives claim that Kasner must be spinning in his grave. They believe Google has gained financially at their expense and they want to become IPO insiders to put his soul to rest."
YOU GOTTA BE FRIGGIN' KIDDING ME!! They 'want to become IPO insiders to put his soul to rest???' That has to be the LAMEST reason for a lawsuit in the history of lawsuits! (right next to copyright infringement of a certain OS kernel w/o actually SAYING what it is or spilling hot coffee on one's self and successfully sueing BECAUSE of it...)
I need a drink...
Talk about trying to cash in on success! I doubt they have a legal leg to stand on. To my knowledge googol wasn't trademarked. So it's not like he was trying to restrict use of the term. In fact, since an effort was made to get it into the general mathematical parlance, pretty much the opposite is true.
Mickey Mouse is a brand name and Disney goes to great links to protect that. Same with Star Trek and Frodo. Googol, on the other hand, is a word. It has never been associated with any brand or trademark this family owns or derives income from.
This is nothing more than a bullshit land grab by theives. Period. They are trying to steal from Google and I wonder what snake put them up to it if they hadn't come up with it themselves...absolute crap.
I can't wait to see how these folks' lawyers quantify losses at Google's hands, or how Google's registered trademark causes confusion with the customers of the word "googol."
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
It's not trademark law. The family never trademarked the term "Googol." It's not copyright law, or else a whole lot of mathematics textbooks are in trouble. For once it's not Patent law.
Is there even a realm of law that would cover such a thing?
Not that I would trust the Inqirer to report the facts without mangling them horribly...
The ______ Agenda
But the name of a number is MENT to be used in the public domain. I don't think anyone can put a copyright on the alphanumeric tag for a 1 followed by 9 zeros (1,000,000,000 also known as a billion). Or for that matter, why isn't Infinity car company, Infinity audio, etc being sued for using the term INFINITY??
Mathematics is non-trademarkable and non-patentable, and most (if not all) mathematicians want to keep it that way. There is very clearly no legal grounds for any of this, as the niece herself admits.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
I hate to see what the future brings...
I don't doubt that some mathematician will discover a formula or specific method of doing a calculation, will name it after himself, and then try to patent it to prevent universities and schools from teaching it.
There should be a law that prevents this type of thing. "Googol" represents a number, that's all. What's to copyright? Had Google not existed, these people wouldn't have made a profit anyway. They're flat out using the law in a way it WASN'T meant to be used to steal money away from this company, and that's wrong.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Once you start talking about digital artworks, it gets harder to make the argument that it exists a priori just because all digital art can be mapped onto the natural numbers. For one, a string of bits could represent a theoretically infinite number of different digital artworks, depending on how you interpret that string of bits. Is it a picture? Is it compressed audio? Are you supposed to just look at the bits and admire their sublime bit-ness?
So it would seem that the art isn't just the number, it's also in the technique for interpreting the number - which isn't in the number. (And can't be in the number, because how would you interpret the portion of the number that tells you how to interpret the number?) If you don't have this technique (and know that you need to apply it), the number is just a number, and nothing else.
So unless you can successfully find a way to mechanically generate all possible ways to interpret this data, I'm not sure you'll be all that successful in getting this stuff into the public domain.
Well, they have a whole paragraph on it no less than 2 clicks from their homepage. They aren't trying to hide anything, and they recognize the origin of the name quite openly.
Which means this lawsuit was cooked up by a money grubbing crybaby bitch with total disregard to legacy. If she had some kind of decency in her, she probably could have gotten google to sponsor a scholarship or something else actually appropriate (note: it's likely they already *do*), but instead she jumps to a lawsuit.
Her great uncle is probably rolling in his grave.
As has been pointed out several times already, Google has provided credit where credit is due.
This family is dishonoring the work of their ancestor by trying to change what was once a gift to the mathematical language into a cash sale.
They already have credit where credit is due. They now also want cash -- where credit is due.
This is another SCO type thing, where some generous intellectual chooses to enhance our quality of life, and someone else comes along and notices they "forgot" to make every dime they could off of it.
If they succeed in this (doubtful) it will cast negative aspersions on their forefather's work and reputation, and run contrary to the natural evolution of language.
And the old man will come back to haunt them and curse their wealth!
And you, madam, are very ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.
I always thought Google had to do with those "googly eyes" that you use to do crafts projects - this was my first impression when I visited google. So how can they say it's infringing on Googol?
Except, of course, that this lawsuit has very little to do with preserving the word 'Googol', and a whole lot to do with trying to ca$h in on Google's upcoming IPO. If it was about preserving the word's original meaning, why would they be trying to extort shares of stock?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
During lawsuits between Intel and AMD over the 486, the courts ruled that a number cannot be trademarked. That's why Intel's next chip was called the Pentium, not the 586. (Intel also named the later 486 chips "i486".) This is also why Google chose to NOT use the name "googol", because they wouldn't be able to trademark that.
There's also the issue of scope. A trademark does not usually apply to everything, but to a limited area. If the areas of use are distinct and unlikely to cause confusion, the same name can be used by different companies. That's why Apple Records and Apple Computer were able to coexist (until iPod and iTunes came along -- expect some serious friction coming from these two). A search site and a number are unlikely to be confused.
Finally there is the issue of asserting ownership. Trademarks can be lost if they are not used or enforced. The usual examples of companies on the verge of losing their trademarks due to non-enforcement are Xerox and Kleenex. The family has allowed (you might even say encouraged) the term googol to be used by the mathematics community for decades. To now assert that the word should be reserved for only "authorized" use is ridiculous.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.