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Owner of the Word Stealth 'Protecting' Rights

Posted by Zonk on from the stealth-stealth-stealth-stealth-stealth dept.

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."

7 of 745 comments (clear)

  1. Jesus Chrysler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Dodge this, scumbag.

  2. He came after me, too by jokestress · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This guy came after our production company Deep Stealth Productions a couple of years ago. It was a thick sheaf of papers, which I dismissed after reading about another small company who had received his form threat. Might have to blow the dust off the thing.

    --
    Evil sig is livE.
    1. Re:He came after me, too by Information+Architec · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, I receievd the threatening package too, because of my web site .
      I ignored him but forwarded the dossier to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse http://www.chillingeffects.org/> who are compiling dossiers on these sorts of guys.
      As a private individual, I'd be interested to see how the hell he thinks a character string in a DNS domain that can be parsed to extract the substring stealth infringes his right to....make money from the word Stealth: like that's a major contribution to society.
      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!

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Diamond Stealth Video Cards by ppcvidz.com · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see that Diamond still has their line of "Stealth" video cards. http://www.diamondmm.com/stealth.php I'm trying to find what year these cards initially launched.

  5. Re:Northrop Grumman stalemate? by Eivind · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Correct. And the protection you get is in a certain sense inversely proportional to the uniqueness of the trademark.

    If I create the trademark "Quropiwla", which is a freely invented word, then I'm going to have a fair chanse demonstrating that anyone using that word does it in the intention of creating confusion with my product -- afterall, what other reason could there be ? It's unlikely someone would end up with that word by chance, and the word doesn't have any meaning as such.

    If, on the other hand I register "Enjoyable" in the market for computer-input-devices (say I market joysticks) then it's not that obvious that others using this word does so in order to create confusion with my product. I'd probably still be able to stop other "Enjoyable" joysticks, but I doubt I'd have a case against say the "Enjoyable" computer-monitor.

  6. He has not gone after Nmap by fv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    He doesn't seem to be going after open source software yet. Maybe he figures that we can't afford to pay him off. My Nmap (Stealth) Security Scanner comes up as result #4 in a Google search for "stealth", higher than the upcoming movie and some other sites he has sued/threatened. Yet I haven't received anything. Not that I feel disappointed and left out or anything ...

    -Fyodor (who is now resuming the search for SCO products or marketing messages talking about Stealth ;)