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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???
Answer : write down a figure, then add a lot of zeros. *rimshot*
Thank you. I'll be here all week; don't forget to tip your server. Why not try the tuna?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
Some dead Greek guy's relative sues MPAA over use of the word 'Pi' as a movie title.
Roman mathematician's descendents sue Dr. Evil over the use of the word "Million"
Parker Brothers sued over the name 'Mr. Green' in the popular "Clue" game by the guy who invented that word.
This post brought to you by the number 3(TM), the letter P(TM) and the color yellow(TM).
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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.
$8.95/mo web hosting
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!
Besides, no one has seen fit to defend the implied trademark (though registered? I'm thinking "not), so I doubt that the lawsuit gets anywhere... I suspect a couple of relatives saw Google's IPO numbers and decided to try at cashing in.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I am a gringo!
Stick Men
Google have already done this - that link has been there for ages.
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
You don't see Parket Brothers suing Microsoft of the word "Monopoly".
But seriously, our society is WAY WAY WAY too litigious and opportunistic for anyone's good. On what grounds based in reality does the family of the man who invented the word "Googol" have to the Internet search engine company?
Google even has it's own dictionary entry - two actually, V and N
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
According to the original article in the Baltimore Sun, the family hasn't decided to sue yet. They probably know that they don't really have a case. 'sides, all they want is to be insiders for the IPO, atm, not get zillions in punitive damages or trademark-violation damages. Of course, this could all change if they don't get the chance to be insiders for the IPO.
So no, this doesn't really seem like a case of folks suing google 'cause they are violating the common-law trademark rights of the 4-year old who came up with "googol"...yet.
Second:
-Motley fool web site
There's several rulings about names that ARE trademarked "falling" into public domain, and it's basically, you're a victim of your own success. Since the word Googol was used as a mathematical term, and has no doubt been used in numerous papers, discussions, etc., I have little belief that this suit would succeed, since the term has definitely been in the public domain for a long time.
That being said, it would be nice if the Google folks maybe put up some of that IPO money to help kids learn math, or something....
Intel found this out to their cost when clone 486 chips came out. On attempting to sue Cyrix et al, they were unable to prevent them from using the number names. Hence the move to the (trademarked) brand name "Pentium".
Who's Billy DeBeck, you ask? Why, just the guy who created the comic strip character Barney Google (you know, the guy with the "goo-goo-googly eyes"?!) and King Features Syndicate for distributing the cartoon for the past EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS (which, by the way, doesn't predate Mr. Kastner but which DOES predate the coining of the word "googol" by at least a decade.)
It's this kind of frivolous abuse of the courts that keeps real and legitimate cases that might bring about real reforms and improvements from being effective (or even successful.)
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
The standard for trademark is confusion in the marketplace. I.e., will consumers be confused about the similarities in the names. E.g., I could legally open an automobile repair facility called McDonalds because consumers would not confuse crappy food with having your car repaired.
From what I gather, Kasner's family has absolutely no business from which consumers could get confused. They're essentially trying to trademark a word merely because a former family member came up with it. That's not the law. Not only will this case get kicked out, the family will be sanctioned for bringing it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If anyone names their dot com company "hoinkel doinkel," my three-year-old son is going to sue their ass off!
From Toonopedia:
The name "Barney Google" is familiar to anyone who ever watched a TV retrospective of comic strips -- he's the guy with the "goo-goo-googly eyes" in the 1923 Billy Rose song they always play in such retrospectives. Many newspapers use his name in the title of one of their comic strips. And in 1995, he was honored by the U.S. Postal Service in its "Comic Strip Classics" series of commemorative stamps.
I think Billy DeBeck, creator of the strip, has a better claim to prior art than the nephew.
A couple notes- like others pointed out, they already give Mr. Kasner props.
I heard about this on NPR a couple weeks ago, before any lawsuit was going to happen. The sad thing is that only ONE idiot from the family is really pushing this- when she came on to be interviewed for a couple minutes by NPR, she said: "My sister wanted me to say that it isn't *THE FAMILY* who has a big problem with this, it is *just me.*" No joke- the rest of them are probably embarassed of her actions.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Jesus must be spinning in his grave....
Well he might if he was still in it.
A latent existence
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
Surely, we must first point out the incalculable advantages of having a geekocracy. Our entire lives will be changed! Think of what will be different:
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.
The total number of particles in the universe is estimated between 10^72 and 10^87. A googol is 13 orders of magnituted higher then that. That means a googol is about 10 trillion times bigger then the numbers of particles in teh universe.
A googolhedron is 10^300 particles so it's 213 orders of magnitutde greater. Even if we raelise the univerese is 100 trillion times smaller then we thought, we're still not even covering a speck of what is needed. Big numbers are stupid that way.
Just some food for thought
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist