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."

Comments

Re:Language

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 0: Learn to spell copyright

Isn't Scholar a generic word?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[kmactane]

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.)

Re:HEY, THAT'S MY WORD

[SEE]

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 . . . )

Re:Language

[tomhudson]

seems people can't tell the diffrence between "SciFinder Scholar" and "google Scholar", caus you know SciFinder sounds sooo much like google, they both have a single e in them!!

Next up:

• Dell Computer vs Gateway Computer
• House of Pancakes vs. House of Carpets (their products sound AND taste the same)
• Tom Cruise vs Tom Hanks
• Tom Hanks vs Tom Arnold
• Shannon Doherty vs Midland Doherty
• Chemical Bank vs the ACS over the use of the word Chemical
• Ford Motor Co vs General Motors
• General Motors vs General Foods
• General Foods vs General Tire
• General Tire vs Goodyear Tire
• Goodyear Tire vs BF Goodrich Tire
• The Goodyear Blimp vs Roseanne Barr
• McDonalds vs anyone singing "Old McDonald Had a Farm"
• Ford suing anyone with an "F" in their stock symbol (Ford's stock symbol is "F")
• SCO suing anyone with a stock symbol with an S, or a C, or an O, or an X (Hence Daimler-Chrysler - DCX)
• ABC suing NBC - 2 letters the same out of 3
• NBC suing CBS - 2 letters the same out of 3
• CBS suing PBS - 2 letters the same out of 3
• SCO suing CBS - 2 letters the same out of 3

Anyone want to add more?

SciFinder

[Bester]

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.

Re:Language

[Crusty Cracker]

I think he was trying to avoid copyright issues.