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Owner of the Word Stealth 'Protecting' Rights
popo writes "Just when you thought ownership of intellectual property couldn't get any more absurd: The New York Times is reporting that the word 'Stealth' is being vigorously protected *in all uses* by a man who claims to exclusively own its rights. Not only has he gone head to head with Northrop Grumman, he has pursued it vigorously in the courts and has even managed to shut down "stealthisemail.com" (Steal This Email.com) because the URL coincidentally contains the word "stealth". What's terrifying is that he's gotten as far as he has."
I'm pretty sure that's what the Northrop Grumman reference was to.
"You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is...never try. Heh!" -Homer
Talk about prior art. The word has existed since 1250.
nil
RTFA, he got them back out of calling it a "stealth bomber" in all sorts of commercial materials.
According to TFA, the guy owns a brand named "Stealth," and he's essentially doing this to prevent other people from making brands similarly named.
...but is it art?
Columbia Pictures as well. That may have been a mistake, see HERE
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
He Says He Owns the Word 'Stealth' (Actually, He Claims 'Chutzpah,' Too)
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Can a man own a word? And can he sue to keep other people from using it?
Over the last few years, Leo Stoller has written dozens of letters to companies and organizations and individuals stating that he owns the trademark to "stealth." He has threatened to sue people who have used the word without his permission. In some cases, he has offered to drop objections in exchange for thousands of dollars. And in a few of those instances, people or companies have paid up.
"If a trademark owner doesn't go up to the plate each day and police his mark, he will be overrun by third-party infringers," Mr. Stoller, a 59-year-old entrepreneur, said in a telephone interview from his office in Chicago. "We sue a lot of companies."
Mr. Stoller owns and runs a company called Rentamark.com, which offers, among other things, advice on sending cease-and-desist letters and Mr. Stoller's services as an expert witness in trademark trials. Through Rentamark, Mr. Stoller offers licensing agreements for other words he says he owns and controls, such as bootlegger, hoax and chutzpah, and sells t-shirts and other merchandise through what the Web site calls its "stealth mall."
He is currently in a legal dispute with Sony's Columbia Pictures unit over a film that opens late this month. It is about elite Navy pilots and titled - what else? - "Stealth."
Mr. Stoller said he first registered "stealth" as a trademark in 1985 to cover an array of sporting goods. But in recent years, "stealth" has become widely used in marketing and branding circles to bestow a sense of the subliminal or the subversive or to convey an aura of lurking power.
Companies including the retailer Kmart and the consumer electronics maker JVC have stumbled into Mr. Stoller's territory and have removed "stealth" from their Web sites after hearing from him. Another electronics maker, Panasonic, omitted the word from a product called the "stealth wired remote zoom/pause control" after receiving one of Mr. Stoller's letters.
"If you can solve problems without going to court you're better off," said Russell J. Rotter, a lawyer for Panasonic, a division of Matsushita.
The best-known stealth brand may be the military's B2 stealth bomber, whose main contractor, Northrop Grumman, has fought Mr. Stoller to something of standoff. In 2001, the company paid Mr. Stoller $10 and agreed to abandon its trademark applications to use "stealth bomber" in spinoff products like model airplanes and video games. In return, Mr. Stoller agreed not to oppose Northrop's use of "stealth" in aircraft or defense equipment.
"We resolved it in a way that achieved our business purposes without in any way agreeing that Mr. Stoller's assertions were correct," said Tom Henson, a Northrop Grumman spokesman.
Trademark owners can obtain the right to use a word for commercial purposes and then to prevent others from seeking to use the same word for similar commercial purposes. For instance, the Delta Faucet Company, which has trademarked "Delta," could prevent another faucet company from adopting the name. But it cannot object to Delta Airlines because the two companies' products are not likely to be confused with one another.
A search of United States Patent and Trademark Office records found that Mr. Stoller and companies that share a Chicago post office box with him - Central Mfg., Stealth Industries, and S. Industries - hold at least two dozen registered trademarks for "stealth," covering such diverse products and services as crossbows, pool cues and insurance consultations.
Mr. Stoller said that he also held and administered as many as two dozen other "stealth" trademarks, and insisted that his close association with the word gave him special rights.
"We're entitled to own it with all goods and services," he said. "We were there first."
Some companies do recognize his rights to some uses of the word. Easton Spo
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Not only has he gone head to head with Northrop Grumman, he has pursued it vigorously in the courts and has even managed to shut down "stealthisemail.com" (Steal This Email.com) because the URL coincidentally contains the word "stealth".
What the article actually says about "Stealthisemail.com" is that Mr. Stroller sent an e-mail to the website telling them to shut it down. Then the article says about InterActivist Network (who runs stealthisemail.com):
Eric Goldhagen, a member of the InterActivist Network, said that members of his group planned to talk to lawyers and others who have received letters from Mr. Stoller to discuss ways to deal with his "stealth" claims. "The fact that somebody, just by claiming to own a word, can intimidate large companies and powerful law firms shows the damage, to an extent, is already done," he said. "If people like Stoller are allowed to get away with this unchallenged, there could be ripple effects to every form of public mass media."
which if you look closely seems to imply to me that they have not taken it to court yet, therefore have not been forced to shutdown. This is easily verified by going to the actual website which is still up.
Though I do agree with the general sentiment of the submitter that this whole thing is ridiculous. -Patrick
The law in this case defies easy summary, but the gist is that when you get a trademark, you're really getting the right not to have confusingly similar things taking your business. The definition of "confusingly similar" is vague, and depends on a few zillion common law cases.
So when he applied "stealth" to sporting goods, it meant you couldn't come out with similar products with similar names. Again, "similar" is up to courts to decide. If you've got "stealth" bowling balls, are "stealth" skis too close? What about golf balls?
Clearly it doesn't apply to airplanes, and honestly I don't know why Northrop didn't just invite him to court. Except that court is expensive, even when you win, and the fact that they paid him $10 is a lot less than the retainer on their lawyers. It's disgusting, I know.
I don't know why they ceded any rights to him at all without knowing more facts about the case. They imply that they weren't seeking their own trademarks, but may have continued to use the name. But a news article isn't a legal brief, so it's hard to tell.
So to answer your question: the word "stealth" has been around forever, but trademarks don't apply only to made-up words. You can take a common word and trademark it for your application, which allows you to keep other people from muscling in on your good idea by confusing people with a similarly-named product. It's the sort of thing that would be accomplished by politeness if you could depend on that. For everything else, there are lawyers.
Prior art only refers to patents. Trademarks do not work this way.
Yes, it's unconstitutional. That would be a bill of attainder, which is explicitly forbidden.
"how can he get the rights for a word that is in PUBLIC DOMAIN?"
In the same way that the names "Tide" and "Crest" are trademarked. Next time you're at the supermarket, take note of how many products take their names from words in the dictionary.
This isn't endemic to stuff you'll find at your grocer's. Computer companies have successfully trademarked the words "sun" and "apple," too.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Yes, other "famous marks" owned by this outfit are "Sentra" (someone better tell Nissan to pony up some dough) and "Stradivarius".
"Stradivarius" IS indeed a trademark - but not belonging to this guy. The Vincent Bach Corporation has been using "Stradivarius" for its top-of-the-line trumpets and trombones since the 1930s.
I'm waiting for him to sue some nine year old over his alleged trademark of "tree house"!
Oddly enough, I had a run in with this guy last year, and almost submited a story about it.
Ok, so my friend and I bought this domain, stealthisidea.com - as in Steal This Idea, and then never did anything with it.
Last summer, we get a packet, 1 inch thick, telling us we're in violation if his trademark on stealth, and that we were to cease all operations imediatly, and hand over the domain, and be prepared to pay damages.
Thinking this guy was just mistaken, I called him to clear up the matter. From moment 1 he was rude and abusive on the phone, demanding we meet his demands. After explaining the situation, he seemed to loose all grip with reality. He said we were violating his rights. He said he would have the police seize our computers and shut us down, all sorts of over the top crap. He took a very forceful tone, and quite frankly pissed me off. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was inappropriate to make those threats, and he just starting shouting loudly over me...
After the phone call, I dug into my records. I'd signed up for some pay-per-month legal service, including the added protection for my business, and yet had never used it. After finding the contact info, I got ahold of 'my lawyer' (actually just a lawyer at the firm asigned to my account) and explained the situation. He had me fax over a copy of the complaint.
In conversations with the lawyer, he agreed it was a frivilous complaint. You can walk into any hobby store and see models on the shelf for stealth airplanes, no TM symbol to be found next to the word stealth, let alone on the websites of companies that make these planes.
He spoke with the gentleman (if you can call him that), and asked for the registration numbers of the marks in question - none were ever produced. He told the gentleman that if he got a lawyer to bring a suit agianst us for such a rediculous claim, that he'd request sanctions against that lawyer.
We never heard from the guy again.
In the original packet were photocopies of letters to various companies, including JVC, asking them to cease production of various products with Stealth in the name.
I don't know if this guy actualy owns these marks (we never did get proof, but the fact that I produced a lawyer so fast may have been a deterent), but I do know he is an agressive, rude, and harassing individual.
The whole thing made me want to go trademark the common term 'sneak' as an alternative - after all, if someone (supposedly) let him register stealth, sneak should be just as valid.
man is machine
For those of you like me
a bill of attainder is
Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.
The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed."
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
If you're curious and want to know about other "stealth" trademarks, head over to the USPTO database at: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=search&state =embs7e.1.1 and use "stealth[bi] & `RN > 0 & live[ld]" as your search term. You'll pull up lots of live (i.e. enforceable) trademarks still in use using the word "stealth."
If nothing else, this guy is trying to make a fast buck by playing fast and loose with the trademark laws.
No, that's not infringement. This page explains the concepts of fair use and nominative use as they apply to trademark law.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The story should contain another link to the guy's site so we could slashdot the asshole. http://www.rentamark.com/
Four roommates. No microwave. You do the math.
The summary is wrong. He only sent a C&D letter to stealthisemail.com The site is quite operational...
I liked the bit about Northrop Grummond paying him $10 to go away.
BTW, IANAL, but I believe there is such a thing in trademark law as prior commercial use. And I think it would be very difficult to trademark a common English word and then sue everyone who uses it in any commercial context which is what he is doing.
I mean, that would be like Microsoft suing Windex because they make a cleaner for windows or Apple suing a bakery because they make apple strudels....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
He claims to own the rights to words such as treehouse and even words such as walk and smile! and claims to own the rights to many phrases including "Thank You" Heres a list of words he claims to own: http://rentamark.com/Wordmarks/wordmarks.html And a list of phrases: http://rentamark.com/e-marks/A-D/a-d.html http://rentamark.com/e-marks/E-I/e-i.html http://rentamark.com/e-marks/J-O/j-o.html http://rentamark.com/e-marks/P-S/p-s.html http://rentamark.com/e-marks/T-Z/t-z.html Quite a few movie titles are included. For example: Terminator and Sahara ".com" is even claimed to be trademarked. Its like they picked a list ofwords randomly from a dictionary.
Apple was rather careful from the outset to inform everyone that it should be called "Mac OS 9" and not "OS 9".
Microware's point of view was that they didn't need a win, just needed a legal basis to show that they hadn't abandond their trademark.
Essentially, the ruling was exactly that, and, IIRC, left the door open to revisit the issue if Apple were to drop the "Mac" part or attempt to use Mac OS 9 to enter the real-time domain.
I believe that this http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=2 cq9aq.5.2 is the trademark that this guy holds, and it seems to cover an extremely large array of products and services.
Special event planning, training services in the field of trademark law, litigation and trademark licensing; amusement arcades, amusement parks featuring amusement rides and attractions, animal training, arranging and conducting education conferences, arranging ticket reservations for athletic competitions, shows and other entertainment events, educational testing, modeling for artists, motion picture theatres, movie studios, multi-media entertainment software for production services; music production services; news analysis and features distribution; news reporting services; officiating at sports contests; organizing community sporting and cultural events; photography services, physical fitness consultation, planetariums, portrait photography; preparing subtitles for movies and live theatrical events; production and distribution radio, television commercials and motion pictures, production of radio and television programs and film studies; providing a computer game that may be accessed network wide by network users, providing continuing legal education courses and fitness and exercise facilities; providing information on-line relating to computer games and computer enhancements for games, providing news in the nature of current events reporting and information in the field of employment training; providing recognition and incentives by the way of awards to demonstrate excellence in the fields of law, medicine, sports, computer hardware, accounting, nursing and secretaries; publication of journals; rental of artwork, rental of computer game programs, rental of films, rental of golf equipment, rental of photographic equipment, rental of video games and rolling skating rinks
Magna Carta, not carter. Latin for "Great Paper." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_carta
There's a bugmenot extension for Mozilla that will save you the hassle. :) Do give it a try, it's nice.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I should have published my book by it's working title "XML by Stealth" - might have given this guy indigestion as you can't copyright book titles!
The guy has a trademark claim, not a copyright claim. You can't copyright short phrases, title or not. You CAN, however, trademark them.
Just FYI.
Actually, many countries don't use British Common Law anyway.
Me (Blog)
No, the origins of the word don't matter a great deal. Fanciful marks, such as Xerox for xerography machines, are just as distinctive as arbitrary ones, such as Apple for computers.
What would stop someone starting a totally different business of the same name are anti-dilution laws (which are new, and widely considered a bad idea).
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
He also offers to license to you such phrases as: Adult Entertainment,Big Screen,Blue Collar, and Back Country.
I found this when I googled his name:- in-chicago-lawsuit-charge.html
i ctures-takes-on-leo-stoller.html
http://thettablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/defendants
There is a picture of his alleged office on that page too.
Also from the same site a post on the Columbia Pictures suit:
http://thettablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/columbia-p
The following qoute from the posting and the linked filing show that he hasn't been successful in enforcing his trademark like the NYT article leads you to believe.
Columbia's complaint includes a handy list of reported federal court cases involving Stoller and/or his companies. Columbia asserts that "No court in any reported opinion has ever found any infringement or dilution of any rights held by Stoller or his companies."
Yes, but you can always illegitimately sue. And that is the problem here, I think ... not enough prequalification of frivolous suits by the judiciary. The presumption seems to be that if a suit is brought by a large corporation that it must have merit, but I think we're seeing that that isn't always the case.
A lot of this may stem from troubles that Xerox and Kleenex had with regard to trademark dilution (or loss.) Both were finding that their tradenames were being used as standard terms. "Here, Xerox this for me" when in fact that copier might be a 3M model, or "hand me a Kleenex, will you?" when the tissues at hand weren't made by Kleenex at all. Neither went overboard on lawsuits, but Xerox did implement an awareness campaign to make people realize that "Xerox" was not a generic term for photocopier. It worked, and the Xerox name is still a trademark and they didn't need to sue any restaurants.
The problem with corporate IP lawyers is that they are a bit like the caged lions the ancient Romans kept on hand at the Coliseum to eat Christians and so forth. You have to let them out to feed now and then.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I had a domain name that I picked at random years ago. Never put a web server up like I had planned but kept the domain name around in case I had a change of heart. I receive this huge packet of fill-in-the-blank legal documents from him threatning me for this and that. After doing some searches online about this character, find out he represents himself in all cases. He's not an attorney, just a guy that knows how to play the system. He tries to drag out proceedings so the plantiff's finally settle out of court instead of drawn out legal fees. Funny thing is, it was a different word in this case (not Stealth) that he claimed to have owned. After doing searches, I found out this jackass had no registered uses of this name anywhere. Needless to say, I chucked the crap. I was supposed to get sued if I didn't reply in 14 days, guess what happened? Nada, what a suprise. He even has a fan site, where there's lots of companies/individuals also receiving the same junk mail. He's a leach, he has no products or services actually, he just tries to fear people to paying him through legal extortion. Hope this guy dies of some long and painful fight with cancer. I know lots of people would be partying that night.
- Sentra
- Intruder
- Stradivarius
- Turbojet
- Checkmate
- Airframe
Fable
- Torrent
- Aerospace
- Star Light
- Terminator
- Ambush
I bet they don't try to enforce "Ambush", though - military forces all over the world must have substantially more firepower than any vexatious litigator. Should be interesting watching him track down any number of terrorists (sorry, "freedom fighters") that "ambush" occupation forces and innocent civilians.BTW: the Famous Marks page looks like real crap. Some images don't load and the ones that do look like a four-year-old got loose with a paintbox
A small company should be represented by a lawyer that knows the ins and outs of your business and has a working relationship with your business, not by somebody who happens to have a law degree and is the one that happens to pick up the phone whenever you dial in with an issue. I'll only get in touch with my lawyer when it is absolutely required (expensive bugger, that man ;-) and most of that time it is just for legal advice -- by somebody who happens to know me and the company, the way we work and our full history.
Only once I had to actually let my lawyer pursuit, and only after I was convinced that:
- there was no other way to get the issue resolved
- the chance for a successful outcome was great enough to risk a lengthy litigation
(even then, my lawyer managed to resolve the case without official legal actions). If you would be running a small business, you would know that legal advice should come from someone who knows you and your company. You would also know that problematic situations should as much as possible be resolved directly with the other party, especially if they happen to be customers. Once both sides get lawyers involved, you can be pretty sure that a quick solution is off the table.Especially in a small business, any money that is a stake in a litigation case that could take years to unwind is money that you're not getting. I've seen a small company go down the drain because the manager refused to resolve a problematic situation with some of his customers amicably. Instead, he opted to threaten them with a lawsuit; after which each of the aforementioned customers got a lawyer of their own and all goodwill disappeared. Last thing I know, the liquidator of that company is still pursuing this in court.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]