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ACS Sues Google Over Use of 'Scholar'
headisdead writes "John Batelle is noting that 'The American Chemical Society yesterday filed
a complaint against Google, claiming the new
Google Scholar infringes on its own
product, called SciFinder Scholar.' Fairly typical subscription vs. free dispute, but with intellectual property issues thrown in for good measure."
Step 1: Copywrite the dictionary
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
The name is fairly obvious for a product such as this, but not that obvious. I'm surprised Google allowed such a clash of names to occur, especially with such related products. I imagine it'll get settled out of court.
apterous.org
although i highly doubt they will win their side of the dispute, seems like a great publicity stunt for them and their pay-to-use service ;) plus, their service is only a subset of google's service, so really it is just a clash of appropriate titles. can't google just scratch the name "google scholar"?
The same could be said of a well-known operating system, of course...
Dang I just need to get my profs to approve me using this for papers and I'm set!
scholspire
The article indicates the basis of the suit is that Google Scholar infringe upon SciFinder Scholar trademark. Granted that Google Scholar appears to do more or less what SciFinder Scholar do (minus the fee.)
But I doubt anyone would confuse the word Google and SciFinder. If their entire suit hinge on the word Scholar, I think ACS is facing an uphill battle.
The real problem here is that you can trademark a word in common use, like "scholar". Since the ACS did exactly that, roughly 6 years ago, they have no choice but to go after Google (or else have their own trademark claims painfully diluted, or maybe just nullified).
I don't much like what's happening here, but if I were Google, I'd be strongly considering just changing the name of my service. (IANAL, but it really looks like Google will have an uphill battle here.)
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
...but that SciFinder thing sounds more like a search engine for Star Trek episodes.
So does this mean that only chemists can call themselves scholars? Damn, I guess I HAVE been wasting my life...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
A subscription to one of their journals is OUTRAGEOUS. Our library has over 50 grand a year set aside for ACS journals. A chemist friend joked with me saying that some of the titles never even get read while in the periodical room.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I can't believe that McDonalds have trademarked the phrase "I'm lovin' it" (plus a dozen over translations of the phrase in other languages)... that is just so wrong.
It sounds stupid and trivial, but remember the frame of reference for trademarks. If I start my own fast food restaurant chain and use "I'm lovin' it" as a slogan, I think it is fair for McDonald's to sue me (and win) for trademark infringement. My use of the slogan would easily cause confusion with customers. Maybe they think my restaurant is sanctioned or supported by McDonald's when it is not.
If I started an amusement park and used that slogan, McDonald's would have a tough time getting me to stop unless I was also infringing other trademarks (e.g. the entrance to the park was a pair of golden arches).
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Dear ACS,
Shame on you and your lawsuit against Google!
I know your type -- you've found a nice little money-maker with SciFinder, and you don't want to lose it, even at the expense of stifling the free and unencumbered flow of scientific information.
I think you should know, you'll anger many of your intended 'grassroots' with this move, which is, in my opinion, unethical.
I'm a chemist, and I sincerely hope that the ACS either mends its ways, or is squarely put in its place by Google and tide of changing times!
Sincerely,
David Hart
I'm sorry, Word Thief® is a registered trademark of the American Plagarists Guild. Unauthorized use is, in an acknowledged irony, forbidden.
If you wish to avoid lawsuits, you may join the Guild. Just send us a photocopied Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America membership form with a check made out to cash. (We couldn't be bothered to come up with our own form, and over 90% of our members have professional access to the NG/CWA form anyway . . . )
It's a big deal because you presume that ACS "owns" the term "scholar" when applied to a literature search service. ACS's term, I believe, is actually "SciScholar" and it's a desktop (vs web-based tool). IMO, that is plenty of difference to invalidate legal action.
What I resent, being in business myself, is every idiot that tries to make money on a legal technicality versus working to creat something that a customer actually cares about. Patent and copyright legal fights raise the cost of goods and hurt consumers (as well as legitimate, honest businesses).
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Next, Coca-Cola will sue Pepsi Cola over the use of the word Cola.
They can't. They already did, and settled. Previous to that suit Coca-Cola made dozens of competing products either change their name or put them out of business.
KFG
As a user of SciFinder Scholar I really don't think that ACS should be trying to draw a comparison between their product and google's scholar.
SciFinder is terrible. The UI is non-consistent with the standard windows suite, cf to google's wonderful UI. SciFinder is also ugly as a dog (a pug at that).
It's slow as a dog, cf to google's speed.
Tell it to save to results and all you get is unprintable ascii characters.
Performing a search is painful task with poor boolean support.
On the whole scifinder is poor product that I hope is supersceded with google's scholar.
--
A Commentary on 'The Hare and the Tortise' In reality the hare would have beaten the pants off the tortise in a race, rarely does slow and steady win the race. Instead it is the fast hare capable of the leaps and bounds of modern thinking that will win the race. This fable is told to encourage fat stupid children.
ACS will win because it has trademark for the name which is a name for a scientific search engine.
If there was a homework&tutoring service "Private Scholar" or a academia singles service "Lonely Scholar" and ACS went after it, if would be stupid and ACS would lose.
Kellogs successfully prevented Chevron from using a tiger as a convenience store food maskot because the cartoon tiger looked a lot like the one on the box of cornflakes. (If the tiger was used to sell gasoline or motoroil it would be OK).
On the free vs. fee-based controversy: unlike Google, Scifinder Scholar abstracts all chemistry and biology journals and chemical formulas there. With many leading journals producing thousands of pages every month each and hundreds of journals indexed, it costs enormous amount of man-time to keep the database up-to date. Maybe modern search technology can make the database building process cheaper. But there is no good way to index the structural formulas. Someone (with degree in chemistry) has to read the article, understand what it means and enter the chemicals, reactions and keywords one at the time.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
I'm a dues paying ACS member, have been for 10 years. I have never once used Scifinder scholar, I have found the ACS literature searching to "suck" and I avoid using their site. "pubmed" is much better.
The main problem with any of these is that you can find abstracts, but generally have to pay $25 dollars for the PDF. What bugs me about that is much of the research is publically funded, why should the general public have to pay for the paper when we funded the research?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
No way. I'm a chemist, a member of ACS, I've used scifinder scholar, and I've used google scholar. They're not the same thing, they shouldn't be confused, and furthermore google scholar doesn't provide fulltext access to ACS journals. So there is no effect upon subscriptions. Nor is there any real competition - the products don't even really serve the same purpose. If anyone should be scared of google scholar, it's ISI, makers of Web of Science/Knowldedge, the worst search of all time.
The ACS is just being childish, and as a member, I'm embarassed.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat