Slashdot Mirror
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."
Does this mean we have to change the C&C "stealth" tank to "unobtrusive and hard to see" tank"?
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
Dodge this, scumbag.
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?
I just posted the word "Stealth" on my blog about 50 times. Just try and sue me. http://www.orangehairedboy.com/
Blog: orange haired boy
Columbia Pictures as well. That may have been a mistake, see HERE
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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
What's terrifying is that he's gotten as far as he has.
Not really, I'd just have to say that he's been very furtive and sneaky about it, indeed, he's acted quite surreptitiously about the whole thing.
Yeah, imagine how dumb it would be if we could trademark words like 'windows' or 'apple'.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I just copyrighted, trademarked and patented the word "The"(c)(tm) (both pronunciations) along with a whole host of definite and indefinite articles. I will be vigorously pursuing everyone using "The"(c)(tm) in books, film and sound recordings. Unless you license "The"(c)(tm) at the low, low price of $0.01 per usage, I will send the(c)(tm) RIAA, MPAA and the(c)(tm) NLAKC (Nazi Librarian Association of Knuckle Crackers) to hound each and everyone of you. And don't let me catch you using Peer to Peer technology to distribute "The"(c)(tm). Recent Supreme Court rulings will allow me to go after such tecnologies as the(c)(tm) keyboard, CRTs and web browsers (you are in my sights "The"(c)(tm) abuser, Bill Gates).
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I appreciate that a lot of movies lately really haven't been up to par as one might expect, but do we really have to bury them before they've even made it to the screen? I, personally, want to go see this movie, and am willing to give it a chance. I don't quite see why they're all horrible the moment they're concieved.
Further, I wouldn't be surprised if this guys campagin goes after the theatrical production compan because of this movie. I would, however, be surprised if he got anywhere with it. I'm not sure how Northrup-Grumman are experienced with defending themselves against the legaleese vigilantes with half-wit agendas, but 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.
Informatus Technologicus
(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...
Omit the registering and the lawsuit, and I might be interested.
Would it be unconstitutional if Congress made a law to... you know... just smack this guy with a rolled-up newspaper or something?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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!
Stealth in action!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... I'm the owner of PenIsland.com (Get your free pen from us) and I've received a few legal threats from several homosexually-oriented pornography websites (the url's of which I am not of liberty to disclose). This is an outrage, clearly all I am trying to do is provide the world with a service of free pens.
(In case you didn't realise, I don't own the domain and this post was a joke >.>)
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
Good thing I have a lithp, tho you can't come after me, Mr. Thmarty Panth
My UID is prime... is yours?
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
Otherwise you'd have people patenting words like "the" and "it"...
Aaaaugh! Aaaugh! Augh! Ohh! Don't say that word!
My site
IANAL, but as I understand, trademarks are for a specific class of item. For example, some company could make a brand of gum called "It" and have that as their trademark, which means nobody else can make "It" brand gum or some product named "It" that could confuse consumers. From the article:
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.
I'd like to see the law that says if you have X trademarks for a word, you own it in every use. I have a feeling if someone stood up to this guy in court, this wouldn't stand, but from a big corporation's perspective it's cheaper to remove the words or settle for several thousand dollars than pay the lawyers' fees.
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.
So Leo Stoller 1985 array of "stealth" brand sporting goods isn't the same product as Sony's Columbia Picture's major motion picture release of a similar name? Could somebody please explain this to me? Because I really did think they were the same thing. But I guess I was wrong.
"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.
To whomever does kill him, PLEASE make sure that his death is slow painful, and excessively cruel
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.
Argh! My eyes! My retinas are *bleeding*!
...
I wonder if he owns the trademark to utterly craptacular web design?
And some of the words?
Renaissance
Name of a period in history. A common word.
Stradivarius
Surname of a family of violin makers. Can you trademark someone else's name? And really expect them to licence it back from you?
Tirade
Hmm... I feel like going on one right now...
This guy is a total and utter bastard (is that one of his?) and his trademarking of words *and then going after people in unrelated industries* is even less convincing as a business tactic than anything SCO ever came up with.
Why Northrop Grumman caved in, I'll never know. They should have nailed his arse to the court documents and filed it under 'F' for
Slashdot needs a +1 makes the parent look like an idiot mod.
cause I would use that one all the time.
Some idiot claimed to have a patent on the microprocessor long before anyone else took a patent out and he was suing everyone in sight. The funny thing about his patent application that it includes only football play diagrams. I never heard what happened to the idiot or how far he got in collecting money.
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.
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
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"!
what "squatting" means without "cyber". Now I know. :(
My new business model:
1. Register trademark for cool words in all industries
2. wait for someone actually develops product that can be described using the word
3. wait more so the "damage" becomes extensive
4. file lawsuit
5. Profit!!!
managed to shut down "stealthisemail.com" (Steal This Email.com) because the URL coincidentally contains the word "stealth".
I had an acquaintance who worked at a company called Via Grafix in Pryor, OK. The company has been around at least since early nineties. Their website is viagrafix.com. He complained to me that they would get all this email about people asking about viagra. He said those people thought it said ViagraFix not ViaGrafix. I guess it was lucky they got the domain long before viagra came along.
They made a piece of software called DesignCAD, which is a stupid name, because CAD means Computer Aided Design.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
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
I mean, if SCO can get away with 'producing' litigation for money, why not this guy? Though, I'll admit, picking on Linux/FLOSS is a far cry from picking on the rest of the world
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.
This guy needs a good swift kick in the balls.
Seriously.
I mean, hoW many movies about AI weapons that turn evil do we need?
One. War Games. Everything since is crap.
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.
And besides, Joshua wasn't really evil, just a little confused.
Preferably his killer will be a stealthy ninja who will quietly step out of the shadows and say, "Do you own the trademark to the word irony too?" and then stab him.
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.
Amend! Amend!
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
A.) "Terminator" is on that list. I hear someone in the California executive branch might have something to say about that.
B.) The logos are the ugliest things I've ever seen (goatse included), and half of them don't even load.
C.) Is "renting" your trademarks out actually a legitimate business strategy?
I'm actually not sure that's quite what goes on. If I'm understanding this correctly, people pay $300 a year so that RentAMark.com can "proclaiming to the world" that the phrase "tree house" "is famous, well known, in use and not abandoned."
________________________________________________
suwain_2
All prior art aside, I thought you could only "license" or "defend" your trademark if a rival company decided to market things in your area or business but as far as I see it, he's suing/threatening anyone using the word "stealth" in any context. I haven't seen his company make any military bombers lately, or movie bombs for that matter. Someone tell me I'm not being outrageous in my claims )even though IANAL)... oh wait. -TX297
His logos are genius. Simply put, the most profound use of the pixel since Pong. The colors are bold, never sassy, bright and in your face. The word "Sentra" becomes more than mere syllables or phonemes: it becomes a visual orgasm!
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...
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.
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.
With an iron blade? That would be... you know... ...
cliche?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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.
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
Damn, I'm going to trademark "Cock", and "Money Shot" and take over the porn industry.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
SHUT UP!
Bloody vikings.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
He got TEN DOLLARS?
I'd have held out for fifteen at LEAST! In fact, I'd have demanded Northrop pay for a twenty dollar blowjob! As it is, he got fucked up the ass for ten bucks!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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
http://rentamark.com/
And remember to hold down the "Shift" key when you hit "refresh"
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
It's not OK. It's not stealing, or theft or any other verb like that ; those are emotive words that also don't acurately reflect what has happened.
What has happened is copyright infringment ; an unlawful act.
The NY Times creates this content, it has to pay a writer, support a webserver, pay bandwidth bills.
In return, for creating this content for u to read, all they ask is that u look at some ads.
I think that's a reasonable exchange, that I agreed to. If you don't think it's reasonable, then you shouldn't break the law to allow others to circumvent it.
I'm against unmitigated douchebaggery just as much as the next slashdotter, so I'm going to suggest that someone should really trademark this guy's name.
Then, every time he serves someone with legal papers, the trademarkee can write a C&D filled with flowerly language to him because the real, trademarked Leo "The Marktard" Stoller would never be such a mean person.
The guy claims to own "chutzpah" as well. What a putz.
you had me at #!
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
For everything else, there are lawyers.
And you'll be hearing from ours shortly. Thanks.
Mastercard Legal Department.
After all, the best way to get a law repealed is to enforce it strictly. How better to illustrate the stupidity of IP laws and the loser-pays legal system than to be completely over the top like this?
How is this "immoral," especially given that the people being tracked are anonymous? All they're doing is learning that, say, people who read a lot of articles about tennis also tend to follow British politics, or that hardly anyone makes it through to the last page of Joe Reporter's economics stories. It doesn't carry the slightest possibility of hurting anyone.
With an iron blade? That would be... you know... ...
...Ferrous?
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
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.
SlealThisTrademark/StealthIsTradmark and use it to really wind up plank up.
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.
As legal representative of the Cease & Desist Corporation and its owner, Mr Bernard Dickman, I must remind you that "cease and desist" is a legally registered trademark of said corporation and that your use of the term creates a serious danger of confusion of your company with said corporation in that their business operations are essentially identical to yours, that is, the badgering of companies large and small into paying money for the use of plain English words that have been trademarked. Kindly cease and desist (TM) immediately and we will forego any legal action against you and your company.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Emily Flywheel
Flywheel, Shyster, Flywheel and Camshaft, Attorneys at Law
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
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.
Sure he's completely immoral, but he definitely knows how the trademark system REALLY works.
First, from the article it's clear that he puts the "stealth" mark on nearly everything, including air conditioners. That at the very least gives him a legal basis to sue.
Second, he's more than willing to settle for what would be considered nominal amount. While a few grand might be nothing to K-Mart, if he gets enough of them they add up quickly.
The fourth and last is that he's never actually WON a lawsuit! He's had this great settlement record even though he gets his butt kicked everything he enters a court room. That takes a lot of balls.
I'm not saying I like the guy, or even respect him. In fact, if I could get away with it, I'd ensure he got a slow and painful death. I'm just saying he knows all the flaws in our system and he's taking good advantage of them. And maybe if enough people start doing this, our system will change for the better.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
He also offers to license to you such phrases as: Adult Entertainment,Big Screen,Blue Collar, and Back Country.
I read about that in TFA and it got me to wondering, did Northrop Grumman use the word "stealth" in naming and/or marketing the plane, or is that a dictionary term the press and the U.S. government just used to describe it (and the public henceforth adopted as an unofficial name)? I think (I may be wrong) that the official "name" of the aircraft is the B2 Spirit - nothing about "stealth" in that name.
One telltale sign, I don't remember ever seeing "stealth" capitalized when describing it, which leads me to believe it's being used as an adjective, not as a name.
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
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."
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
Stoller came after me back in March 2004 because I was using 'stealth' in my domain name - and still am! I documented it all here:
My Stoller Story. He was going after a hell of a lot of personal websites at the time, trying to scare money out of people. He deserves a good kicking. If it wasn't for the fact he was on the other side of the Atlantic I'd personally have torn him limb from limb.
is that he's gotten as far as he has."
How could anyone possibly believe otherwise? This is the natural path of all these kinds of laws. There can be no other way. All prohibitions end up like this, mostly due to the selective enforcement(and mostly against the poor). If you are to continue with this, you will continue to see the same kinds of results. So, let's see if we can abolish the whole thing without having to fire a shot. Freedom shouldn't have to come out the barrel of a gun.
What?
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]
So this guy wants exclusive use of the word on an International level! I wonder if the word exists in any other language and what legal claim would be made for the word in a non-English speaking country.
Anyway, the package, as usual, contained letters from companies that had withdrawn their use of the word "stealth" from their products etc.
I was concerned when I received the package so I had a good friend of mine look over the letters to see what my legal standing was. My friend pretty much laughed at the whole thing and proceeded to point out that every few letters were identical in wording, sentence structure, and paragraph positioning. He was absolutely correct!
He believed that all of the response letters coming from companies such as Panasonic, that were included in the package, were doctored.
All of you guys that have received the package, have a close look at the letters and see for yourself.
In addition, I scanned the whole package and sent it to a Lawyer in Missouri... he basically said that the this guy was seen, amongst the legal fraternity, as a clown.
If anyone wants a copy of the package let me know so I can email it to you (or is that a breach of copyright?)
-1 idiot/-1 wrong. For a post that was _factually inaccurate_ - not necessarily flamebait, or overrated... just wrong. Like the opposite of "informative"
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