VirtualDub Author Stymied by Trademark Troll

trifish writes "The author of VirtualDub wrote on his blog that 'someone has registered "VirtualDub" as a "word mark" in Germany as of June 6, 2006 and is now sending out notices to people in that country demanding money for so much as mentioning the program and linking to the SourceForge download from their website.' Well, I confess that only now I fully understand why Linux, Mozilla, TrueCrypt, and other open source projects register their names as trademarks."

Comments

Who?

[phorm]

So who is it that has registered this "word mark" anyhow? The blog itself is pretty short on details, as it appears those that link to or use virtualdub have been getting the letters, and not the author himself.

Also, one wonders if there is some legal way to charge and/or get money back from somebody who is illegally using the name of your product to extort money.

Comments more interesting...

[himurabattousai]

It appears that the author or VirtualDub might not be in trouble at all. According to the comments about his blog entry, the letters are worthless if they aren't from a lawyer--and sometimes even if they are. It also seems that since his program has documented existence that predates the word mark "registration," such a registration would be invalid.

No less troubling, though, are those who can't do a damn thing in life trying to legally steal from those who actually produce something of value. I can't think of any better word to describe the actions of people who create nothing, not even ideas, and sue when someone comes up with a device that loosely resembles their mystery ideas.