Dept. of Homeland Security Enforces Expired Patent

Fouquet writes "Apparently the Department of Homeland Security does not have enough to do in keeping the US safe, and now is enforcing copyright law as well. The AP reports that a toy store owner in Oregon was requested by Homeland Security officials to remove a potentially copyright-infringing Rubik's cube-like toy from her shelves. The patent for Rubik's cube was issued in 1980, and so it is expired."

Comments

Fear of powers

[fembots]

In normal cases, people will just consult a lawyer (the shop owner did call her supplier, later), or at least ask for supporting documents before they complied to requests from officials. For example, you tend to ask for a search warranty if someone wants to search your house.

However with all the terrorism and patriotism nowdays, peasants can't afford to not cooperate, "just in case" you got blamed for being terrorist or unpatriotic.

Next thing we know, IRS burst into a kindergarten arresting several 5-year-old's for not calculating and paying proper tax while playing Monopoly, just to protect the integrity of the economy and nation's financial systems. "If they can't do tax at age of 5, will you trust them to pay tax 20 years later?!"

Re:Fear of powers

[Anonymous Coward]

These are US Customs agents. Customs agents enforce, among other things, import regulations against counterfiet goods.

The Customs Service is now part of Homeland Security. Ergo, DHS agents were the ones who investigated this incident.

(This is cut and pasted from below. It should be near the top... or in the summary)

Re:Fear of powers

[bani]

Why are you getting your knickers in a bunch because some federal agents are doing their job?

Because they weren't doing their job. Their job was to determine the validity of the complaint, which they utterly failed to do. Hence, they failed to do their job.

If anything, the infringer was the manufacturer -- not the retailer. They did not go after the manufacturer, they went after a retailer. Again, they failed in their duties.

Re:Fear of powers

[mrwonton]

So basically you're advocating that their job is to respond to a complaint by immediately forcing whoever the complaint is made upon to stop doing whatever was complained about? Thats an interesting approach. So if my competator sells a competing product line, I should file a complaint and have the Department of Homeland Security come shut them down without first performing even the most cursory research? Even if they were right, which in this case they obviously were NOT, they should be stopping infringing products well before they hit retail shelves.

Re:Fear of powers

[querencia]

Your job is to read the article. You didn't do so, because if you did you'd know that no trademark was infringed, and the patent's already expired.

Which article did you read?

The article said, "...Agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint...." So, this is a trademark issue -- the patent expiration is irrelevant. It also said, "A representative [of Magic Cube's manufacturer] told her that ... the Magic Cube did not infringe on the rival toy's trademark." Of course the manufacturer said that. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the owners of the trademark who filed the complaint obviously disagree.

Please U[understand]TFA before you tell me to RTFA.

Re:Fear of powers

[the_quark]

Well, the patent's a total red herring, anyway, it has nothing to do with the raid. The government never said they were enforcing a patent, whether it's expired or not seems to have nothing to do with it.

The only evidence the article presents that no trademark was infringed is "a representative" of the manufacturer, via hearsay testimony from the owner of the store, both of whom presumably have some interest in claiming not to be breaking the trademark.

Unfortunately, the only evidence the article presents that a trademark was infringed was a spokesperson for DHS stating there was a complaint. There is a lot we don't know - it's quite possible the Magic Cube does infringe on Rubik's trademark. Contrary to the title of the /. article, it's not expired; they're running around suing people for violating it.

But, beyond that, nowhere in the article does it say Rubik was the one complaining. People just jumped to that conclusion. There is a live trademark on "Magic Cube" for a "manipulative puzzle" filed in December, 2001 by Atico, International. It would seem reasonable to me that Toysmith's product violates this trademark. There is no information in the AP article to conclude "no trademark was infringed," in fact the reporter seems to have done no research at all but calling DHS and the toy store operator. It's a terribly done article that is mostly about how weird it is that the people who enforce trademarks now work for DHS. But that's hardly new or news.

Re:Fear of powers

[rjkimble]

The trademark infringement complaint, according to the article, ....

Sigh. I guess dealing with the caliber of typical posters on slashdot is a waste of time. The author of the article didn't even grasp the difference between patents and trademarks. On top of that, the source that denied the existence of trademark infringement was the distributo of the infringing goods. Hello????

Of course, what else would you expect from the likes of an Associated Press reporter?

A little research turns up the fact that not only has Seven Towns Limited trademarked Rubik and Rubik's Cube, they have trademarked its appearance. You might want to check out this, this, and this before continuing your sophistry. Realizing that one might actually have to search a bit on the last referenced page to find the relevant commentary, I'll post it here:

March 2004

Section: 7th Circuit.

Gary Ropski was quoted in the March, 2004 publication of Corporate Legal Times in an article discussing the Seven Towns v. Hazco lawsuit concerning the Rubik's Cube. Mr. Ropski, counsel for Seven Towns, commented on Hazco saying that, "they know how valuable the Rubik's Cube trademark and trade dress are because they tried to get a license from Seven Towns to use it. . . After being refused permission, they used it anyway." He continued by saying, "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Association granted Seven Towns a trademark for the appearance of the Rubik's Cube. It's a violation of federal law to infringe that trademark by making a product that's confusingly similar."

So it turns out that the Customs agents knew their job and were doing their job, just as I stated. I'm sorry if you don't like the facts.

Re:Fear of powers

[rjkimble]

No. I'm advocating that they do their job, which they did. It turns out that Seven Towns Limited has a trademark on the terms "Rubik" and "Rubik's Cube" as well as on the appearance of the Rubik's cube. So the "Magic Cube" mentioned in the story was probably infringing on the appearance trademark. A little research reveals that Seven Towns had already won a lawsuit over this very issue. It's highly likely that the Customs agents had all the relevant information they needed to take their course of action.

I think you are the one who needs to do some cursory research before jumping to inaccurate conclusions and flaming professionals who are competently performing their jobs.

Re:Fear of powers

[CaptainFrito]

The Department of [Whatever] marching in and "requesting" that someone do something or not do something 'just in case' is itself a form terrorism, by definition. People are genuinely afraid of what might happen if they don't fully comply, regardless of morality or legality. Many suppose that by 'going along to get along', they'll be rewarded with special favor.

This is exactly what you get when you trade freedom and liberty for the illusion of security. Security is always a future risk issue, and only a fool thinks the future is can be controlled by people. Of course there are general precautions, but history has shown that the most effective methods are simply to treat your neighbor as yourself, then only the profoundly selfish, sadistic and crazed are at issue. In which case, you're sunk anyway.

For example, why not empower the State to do daily inspections of every single home to root out 'terrorist cells'? Of course, if this were to be undertaken some "cells" would be found, but the proven reliable sociological effect would yield only the sadistic domination by the very 'security' people responsible for the enforcing the policy. And from the evidence I've seen this behavior cannot be predicted by any level of psychological screening. It's a matter of flawed human nature. And the effect is seen in less than a week, so for all those who think this is slow and unusual and is easily managed, you're simply wrong -- the effect propagates through all echelons of such organizations and is quite thorough and complete.

For those of you following along with the true issues involved, liberty has been redefined by Presidential decree three times in the last 50 years (see EO13083, et al). Of course, the US consitution itself hasn't been changed, but the dictionary used to decode it sure has.

go figure

[Izago909]

He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.

She's lucky that she wasn't declared a terrorist and her all human rights voided on sight.

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.

God forbid some terrorists fly some Boeing knock-offs into buildings instead of legitimate ones.

"Aren't there any terrorists out there?" she said.

The war is not meant to be won....

Ahh, America

[Mark_MF-WN]

Ahh, America -- land of the moron. Where the nation's anti-terrorism forces bravely persecute toy-store owners for "violation" of expired patents.

rUSsiA

[sn0wflake]

USA seem more and more like a police state. Once I wanted to visit USA but now I wouldn't dream of setting foot in the states. I'd probably be arrested if I said something wrong.

Re:rUSsiA

[boredMDer]

You think that's bad?

Check this out.

Excerpt:

A couple of weeks ago, following the last presidential debate, I said some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style. We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor in the face of annoyance, and while a couple of people were offended, as is typical behavior from me, I saw something shiny and forgot about it, thinking that the whole thing was over and done and nothing else would come of what I said.

I was wrong.

At 9:45 last night, the Secret Service showed up on my mother's front door to talk to me about what I said about the President

Uh huh

[mr.henry]

This is a surprise? Here is a nice quote on abuse of the Patriot Act:

"Within six months of passing the PATRIOT Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the PATRIOT Act to fight terrorism. Then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."

Re:Uh huh

[LardBrattish]

Fahreinheit 911 had a good take on the Patriot act with that Senator going "we don't have enough time to read all the bills" etc. I'm sorry but THAT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB. That's why it's called "a reading" before the law is passed - YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO READ IT. During the "reading" if it turns up late and if it takes a week to read it, fine, that'll teach the legislators to publish the draft bills early enough to get them thouroughly read before the reading.

Democracy is quietly dying because a buch of lazy people will happily pass the "Happy fluffy bunny (you'd be a nasty pinko liberal for not passing this) bill" without actually reading it and finding out that it disbands senate & congress and leaves all legislative & executive power in the hands of the president who now has an extended (life) term of office.

Of course!

[theparanoidcynic]

Puzzles are an atempt to destroy our national security! If our children had puzzels they, they might become smart, and ask questions. We can't have children asking questions now can we? They'll never make good sheeple that way!

DHS seems to have morphed

[Dancin_Santa]

The American Federal government already has a law enforcement agency, that being the ever-venerated FBI. In addition, the Secret Service also acts in some cases as a law enforcement agency, providing protection for the President, government buildings like the U.S. mints, and, of course, as the chief investigator of counterfeiting schemes.

Now the DHS seems to see its role as more than a simple anti-terrorist investigative agency. They think of themselves as another arm of Federal law enforcement. To some extent, they are correct. The role they play is vital to American national security, and to reach the goals of the agency it is mandatory that they have the ability to use law enforcement tactics.

However, to stretch the fairly narrow initial charter of the DHS to include such things as "defending the national economy" is nothing short of stupid and dangerous. When the DHS was formed, their purview only included possible terrorist attacks. Now it is expanded to include just about any crime that someone deems undesirable.

The government should not have many overlapping law enforcement agencies. Indeed, this is what led to the massive intelligence failure on 9/11 with the lack of communication between the various government agencies. The DHS would be better absorbed into the FBI as a anti-terror division than to continue expanding its powers unabated.

Useless summary.

[praksys]

Trademarks don't expire. Trademark, copyright, and patent are entirely different things. Reading the summary you can't tell which of these areas of law was involved and you get the impression that the action was taken on expired IP.

The article states that the action was taken on the basis of a trademark. With a name like "Magic Cube" if the toy is anything at all like a Rubic's Cube then it almost certainly does infringe on the Rubic's Cube trademark.

And why all the fake wonderment about the department of Homeland Security handling the case? In case anyone missed the press release the department is not some niche organisation that deals specifically with terrorism. It's a big tarball of a whole bunch of departments and old law enforcement angencies that used to deal with all manner of federal law enforcement issues. They do lots of things besides deal with terrorism.

I want one

[gooman]

Oh man, I want one of those Magic Cubes so bad, which is funny, because I hated the Rubiks Cube (not because it was hard, it was just too popular).
So how about it ThinkGeek? I want "the toy the government doesn't want you to know about".
How cool would that be.

Re:And why _aren't_ you voting for Bush?

[kubrick]

Vote Bush for a better, safer America. Vote Kerry for a wealthier Kerry.

Have you seen the price of oil recently?

Re:And why are you people voting for Bush?

[Anonymous Coward]

"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our Homeland." -- Adolf Hitler, on the creation of the Gestapo

Re:It's a case of priorities

[1lus10n]

No. What we need to do is make america safer. Not fucking expend resources trying to enforce expired patents/copyrights.

Pal I have to break you the news, but if we dont start figuring out a way to inspect the containers most of the seaports in this country could be blown to kingdom-come. There wont be any products left to buy.

The Terrorist threat has been blown way the fuck out of proportion by the bush administration. We were attacked (and also had several failed attempts) several times before 9/11. 9/11 was the most succesful for sure, but what exactly made it seem like all of a sudden the terrorists got more well organized, or more well financed than they were before 9/11 ? Need I also remind everyone that we were aware that 9/11 was being planned ? The intelligence was there. The government however is to bloated and bureaucratic to handle things like this, and hence dropped the ball.

Want to be secure ? Leave everyone else the fuck alone. You dont see every country in the world being attacked by militant islamic extremist foreigners now do you ? Its because most countries mind their own fucking business.

Oh ... and regarding this comment in specific:
"What you need to do is to stop terrorists at their source not after they've gotten their goods into the harbours."
You think searching the harbours or container ships is a problem ? Take a look at a fucking map, searching and securing the entire globe would be a bit harder. I think you can wait an extra month for your digital camera. The economy will adjust if it has to.

sorry...

[zogger]

...tha's just wrong. Completely absolutely wrong. I distinctly remember when we had a great, viable economy, a GOOD one, BEFORE almost everything was imported. BEFORE. When any random Joe Normal blue collar job was enough for a house and a car and a flock of kids and benefits and vacations and savings. Not even a high paid white collar, just a normal middle of the road blue collar, and yes, it might even have been making inexpensive toys. Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it didn't exist. They not only could inspect the containers, they could change the laws back to where the bulk of the containers were going OUT like they used to be when we had a REAL economy that wasn't skewed towards the globalist elite millionaire crowd and calling massive debt, deficits and credit a "strong economy".

That "not be able to inspect" the containers jazz is a load, OF COURSE they could if they wanted to, they don't want to. They manage to "inspect" 80 year old ladies and crippled vets in wheelchairs at the airport. They manage to "inspect" a heap of countries over yonder, to the tune of billions of dollars a WEEK using hundreds of thousands of dudes, some of them making in excess of 600$ a day to just tote a rifle. The "war on terrorism" is a complete fraud. It's war to terrorise americans,oh, that's true, that's really true, but it's being waged by the government, and this article proved it in yet again another small way.

You had to watch it grow ever since the 60s to see it,but it's been creeping incrementalism, and a lot of folks have been warning about it for years. The past few years they have hit the nitrous button, that's the only difference. And they show no sign of relenting, or rolling anything back for that matter, just ever onward. And people have been eating it and sucking it up every step of the way. Can't look at a news site anymore without seeing more and more evidence of it. A FAN at a baseball game shot and killed by getting hit in ther eye with a riot paintball pellet? Huh? Random "courtesy" checkpoints? Huh? Cameras all over staring at you? Huh? Even that name "Homeland Security" WHAT WW2 B war movie did they drag that from? What is all this crap BUT big brotherism and state terrorism?

The goons have proven it, the slow boiling frog, most people will just slurp it down, excuse it, make believe they aren't seeing or hearing what they are seeing or hearing, every step of the way.

Re:It's a case of priorities

[Xyrus]

Terrorism? TERRORISM? You think terrorism is the biggest threat this country faces? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

The Center for Disease Control (the CDC) keeps odds on what you will most likely die from over the span of your life.

Do you know where terrorism ranks? Your more likely to die from lightning than die from a terrorist attack. That's right. Go to the CDC site and see it for yourself.

Your 8 times more likely to die in your own bathtub than die from a terrorist attack. TERRORISM?

You are 18516 times more likely to die in a car wreck than you are in a terrorist attack at the mall you were driving to. TERRORISM?

Do you know how many children in this country die every year because of no healthcare and no food? Do you know how many homeless people there are across the country?

TERRORISM?

You are THOUSANDS of time more likely to get shot, stabbed, hung, hit by car, flambayed, gored, frozen, drown, bludgeoned, and electrocuted during your life than die in a terrorist attack.

The amount of fear-mongering in this country is completely revolting. VOTE FOR BUSH BECAUSE HE PROTECTS US! Bullshit. How about making the roads safer. That would save thousands of lives as the average peron has a 1 in 81 chance of dying in a car wreck during their life.

I've read articles on how parents fear for their childrens safety in this "age of terrorism", while ignoring the fact that their child is thousands of times more likely to die just around their own homes than in a terrorist attack.

TERRORISM? The only real terrorism I know is the fear-gospel being spewed forth by the media.

"One terrorist attack is one too many." You have a 1 in 197 chance of being murdered in your lifetime. Compare this to a 1 in 88000 chance of being killed by the terrorist. I'm a little more concerned about being murdered.

TERRORISM? With 45 million people being uninsured for health, I really don't think that terrorism should be up at the top of the list. You are THOUSANDS of times more like to die from disease over your lifetime than you are to die in a terrorist attack over your lifetime.

No my friends. Terrorism is not the biggest threat to this country. Ignorance is. This country has real domestic problems of its own that DWARFS terrorism on all fronts.

We've spent billions on a war that didn't need to be fought, but we have millions of starving kids in our own backyard. We've spent billions to precision bomb a country that didn't even have clean drinking water, while thousands die every year in our country because they can't afford health care. Billions have been spent on Homeland Security, while homeless shelters have been packed to gills here in our own country.

Think about it.

~X~

end of the world

[timster]

The Red Sox won the World Series under a total lunar eclipse. The leader of the moderate Palestinians is on his deathbed. The Israeli coalition government is about to fall apart over the Gaza withdrawal plan. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has a serious case of thyroid cancer. All this less than a week before one of the most contentious US Presidential elections in history.

And now, Slashdot editors confuse copyright, trademark, and patent law all together at once, creating a sort of Grand Unified Theory of IP Confusion which was obviously the purpose of Slashdot.

So yeah, the end of the world.