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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."
Talk about prior art.
Trademark != patent.
(From TFA) In 2002, the Illinois attorney general sued Leo Stoller after he used a Web site to solicit donations illegally on behalf of victims of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
No, this guy's not a total fucking scumbag...
for stuff like this.
Someone who's this greedy, self-centered and determined to make a mess of everyone's life, liberty and property for his own advancement would discretely get his ass kicked one day on his way home from work. Seriously, the courts are too civilized of a way of dealing with things like this sometimes. Not that I'd recommend doing it to him, but there was a long period in our history where being this much of a troll got your ass tore up by a few "concerned citizens" for wasting tax payers' money with frivilous cases that were all about greed and nothing about justice.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The most telling sentence in the article:
For all his time in federal courtrooms - Mr. Stoller says his companies have been in court 60 times - there is no record within the Lexis database of a federal court decision on "stealth" in his favor.
In other words, the man is a litigious idiot. The fact that he's occasionally managed to get people to license from him says more about the fact that people are terrified of lawsuits than that the law itself is unfair.
People are terrified of the law. I know I am; at any moment I could be sued and even if I win, it'll cost me thousands, with no way to recapture it. (And before a bunch of non-lawyers start demanding "loser pays", remember that "loser pays" just introduces other unfairnesses when the poor can't sue the rich.)
If programmers ran the world, the law would be clear, concise, and unambiguous. Or at least that's what they'd like to think. Anybody who's actually studied law knows that actual human interactions are full of corner cases, and ass-coverings easily outweigh the meat of most contracts.
If there were no litigious idiots, the law would be a lot simpler. Just like email would be lovely if there weren't a mountain of fools who think that "free" means "mine mine mine". Sadly, neither is the case. The courts are another commons, like email, and this jackass is ensuring that no commons it without its tragedy.
Fucktard.
I'm more than positive that the Motion Picture Association of America is more than prepared for dealing with that sort of chaff in today's legal atmosphere.
That's because they are that sort of chaff in today's legal atmosphere. This is the problem they've caused coming back to bite them in the ass. More "intellectual property" rights means they lose too. It's just a matter of how quickly they buy laws to undo the ones they've recently purchased to cause this sort of imbalance.
Slashdot needs a +1 makes the parent look like an idiot mod.
cause I would use that one all the time.
Yes but, this guy is still an asshole. The reason Apple and Sun should be able to trademark their names in their realms is because it would be lame if someone was out there selling "apple" computers, but they aren't apple. This guy has gone out and totally abused this system to turn it into his own personal extortion scheme. This is the same kind of attitude problem that makes everyone have to suffer through mounds of spam and spend months securing their websites. Some people are just complete assholes and do not care about anyone else at all.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
This guy needs a good swift kick in the balls.
Seriously.
From Rentamark.com's Cease & Desist Section:
There are no well-known trademarks, service marks, trade names and/or domain names that have not already been adopted by some other company first; as in the case at bar. In the same manner that there is not any real property in the 21st Century that can be acquired for free or homesteaded. There is no free well-known intellectual property left in the 21st Century. No free rides!
I don't even know where to begin with this guy...
It's not that people use the word. Nothing about Microsoft's trademark prevents us from using the word Windows. What it does do is prevent us from creating a similar product and calling it Windows or some other name that could confuse customer's.
This guy is a slime ball. He probably created some two bit company and called it STEALTH for the express purpose of bringing bogus lawsuits in the hopes of raking in a lot of money from nuisance lawsuits. I doubt that he has ever won a case. He probably doesn't pursue the cases very far but just hopes to settle out of court.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
It's safe to say he's a fucking sumbag. As the article noted, the purpose of a trademark is to prevent consumer confusion. So if I created Sycraft Amplifiers you cannot also go create Sycraft Amplifiers, that are much cheaper and inferior quality, and snag consumers with brand confusion.
I mean the guy sued Northrop for fuck sake. Nobody is going to confuse a B-2 Stealth bomber with anything this retard could make. He lacks the means to make military stealth aircraft, and the B-2 was first anyhow.
It's pretty clear this guy is just a scumbag who wants to leech money while doning nothing of value. I'm quite sure every dollar he collected for "charity" would have gone right in to his pocket.
The concept does very much exist in most (all?) US courts, though, but the bar is typically set quite high. Having one's day in court is generally seen as a fundamental right, so judges are usually loathe to pull that trigger - you have to work at it pretty hard to get yourself declared a vexatious litigant in most places.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I believe that it is because he trademarked the word stealth in several contexts, not just a single one.
// Ziekke
Why do people on /. continue to think that it's OK to copy entire articles ?
There are a variety of reasons, but in this case, it's because most people don't want to go to the hassle of registering with the NY Times to view an article. Sure, you can go to bugmenot (like I did), but that's almost as much hassle as registering.
Yes, it's copyright infringement, but I think that the benefit it provides (more people RTFA, leading to better discussion) outweighs any harm the NY Times suffers.
They lose ad revenue, but they also don't have to pay for the bandwidth of thousands of slashdotters viewing the article on their servers. (Note that this will never happen, unless they remove their registration requirement.)
Unlawful? Yes. Immoral? Maybe, but so is tracking people's reading habits, which is the only reason I can think of for requiring "free" registration.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Not necessarily, it's called reverse confusion. If there are two users of the mark BMW, the more famous user may assert that it has priority. Or that there is a logical connection from a company that makes cars would naturally enter the market for making clothes.
How litigious can a society get, when lawyers are just one more utility service. Boggles the mind, really.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Just like we should hate and deride all computer programmers just coz some of them behave like bastards and write viruses.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Valid or not, that's why the courts are so reluctant to do it.
Well, I understand that, but that really comes down to them being reluctant to do their job.