O'Reilly Lawyers Set Up Shop in the Patent Office

theodp writes "On the same day Netizens fumed over the trademarking of Web 2.0 (R), lawyers for O'Reilly were beating a path to the USPTO to file for a trademark on MAKER FAIRE, lest some Irish scallywag try to co-opt that catchy phrase for a conference. Speaking of NETIZENS, USPTO records show O'Reilly once sought a trademark for that term. And while details are sketchy, USPTO records also indicate that O'Reilly not only sought to trademark the term WEBSITE, it was the plaintiff in a scheduled Trademark Trial involving a defendant who laid claim to the phrase WEB CITE."

Comments

FP Trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

I trademark "First Post" tm!

Re:FP Trademark

[j0nkatz]

Sorry I claim "prior art"!

Re:FP Trademark

[jesuscyborg]

In America, catch phrases get old!

Re:FP Trademark

[Drooling Iguana]

And then move to Korea.

Re:FP Trademark

[Qzukk]

In Korea only old people catch phrases.

Re:FP Trademark

[FishinDave]

Sorry, "Prior Art" is MY trademark!

Re:FP Trademark

[Cyberax]

...by email.

I'm Trademarking Trademark! (tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

"On the same day Netizens fumed over the trademarking of Web 2.0 (R), lawyers for O'Reilly were beating a path to the USPTO to file for a trademark on MAKER FAIRE, lest some Irish scallywag try to co-opt that catchy phrase for a conference. Speaking of NETIZENS, USPTO records show O'Reilly once sought a trademark for that term. And while details are sketchy, USPTO records also indicate that O'Reilly not only sought to trademark the term WEBSITE, it was the plaintiff in a scheduled Trademark Trial involving a defendant who laid claim to the phrase WEB CITE."

Un-fucking-believable (tm)

Re:I'm Trademarking Trademark! (tm)

[jo42]

No kidding, they've gone from "Good Guys" to "Shite Sucking Weasels" in my book.

Re:I'm Trademarking Trademark! (tm)

[citizensunshine]

In the spirit of the original article linked by our posting, trademarks are the least malicious sort of IP. I'm a law student, and I'm an avid member (as incompatible as those two seem, and as bad as that may sound). There may be much of IP that treads on the toes of innovation, but it's hard to fault a reputable and responsible business for trying to keep others from treading on their toes when by and large they contribute to the community.

A complete denial of any IP rights is like advocating anarchy--very attractive when you disagree with what a democracy decides (and we all know we've seen that recently), but ruinous in the long term. Accepting that there are some bounds of information usage necessary to promote "the progress of Science and useful Arts" isn't sacrilege to us, it's fundamental.

That crazy Bill

[saskboy]

Bill O'Reilly is always up to crazy stuff. Next he'll want to patent racy phone calls that generate a lawsuit.

What? Oh, you don't mean that O'Reilly? Yeah, we'll they are crazy too. Al Gore invented the word website.

Re:That crazy Bill

[corbettw]

Bill O'Reilly is always up to crazy stuff. Next he'll want to patent racy phone calls that generate a lawsuit.

Prior art.

Re:That crazy Bill

[chewedtoothpick]

I thought Al Gore invented the internets...

What will he invent next? He already invented Global Warming.

Re:That crazy Bill

[saskboy]

He invented both. Why do you think Global Warming is everywhere? It spreads via the World Wide Weather Web. He invented them both so he'd have a movie to make if his presidential aspirations didn't pan out, and so he'd have a marketing tool to sell the movie. Ingenious really. If only he'd invented the voting machine capable of counting votes made by non-whites, it would be a more wonderful world.

On the subject of Website...

[Kelson]

Way back in the mid-1990s, O'Reilly published a web server program for Windows called... wait for it... Website Professional. Generally abbreviated as O'Reilly Website or just Website. It was later sold to Deerfield, which incorporated it into their VisNetic line. Eventually, Deerfield dropped the product entirely.

So as crazy as it seems, they actually had a product to trademark.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[arth1]

The question is whether everyday words should be allowed trademarked, and how doing this reflects upon those who grab the trademark. Before long, we'll see unscrupulous people trademarking everyday terms like Windows or top level domains like dot-net.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:On the subject of Website...

[eln]

And if you actually look at the trademark application, it states that they were seeking to trademark the term as it relates to "computer software used to create a server on a global computer network and enable management of documents on the server, for use by those who access the electronic global information infrastructure". Also, the trademark application was not rejected, it was abandoned by O'Reilly.

So, the summary is a little misleading as it seems to suggest that they were trying to blanket trademark an obviously generic (even at the time) word.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Anonymous Coward]

And so if I try and trademark "Blog" as the name of some software I have for maintaining blogs, I shouldn't be considered evil?

Tim O'Reilly and his Web 2.0 trademark are now being seen for what they really are - evil attempts at forcing others out of his industry (technology publishing) by trademarking the jargin related to it. That's evil in a way Microsoft could only dream of being.

I haven't bough O'Reilly books for a while, and I'm certainly not going to be after learning about this. O'Reilly can burn in Hell for all I care.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Otter]

I think his point is that while "website" may be a common word today, it was not when they filed on December 28, 1994.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[oyenstikker]

Like "xerox", "kleenex", and "thermos"?

Re:On the subject of Website...

[julesh]

The point is, though, that the fact that some corporations have trademarks on common words doesn't actually prevent the rest of us from using them at all. It prevents other people from setting up businesses that rely on selling products in a similar field with names that are confusingly similar.

Hell, there's even a glazier in my local area called Windows 2000. And I happen to know that Microsoft's UK trademark agents are based not far away, so they're probably well and truly aware of the existence of this company.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Andrewkov]

Your analogy is flawed, those are made up words that were trademarked and then became common words. Not common words that were trademarked.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[deathy_epl ccs]

Your analogy is flawed, those are made up words that were trademarked and then became common words. Not common words that were trademarked.

Your own argument is flawed - website is also a made up word. In fact, as has been stated elsewhere in this article, the application they had that was called Website was from 1994 (and ran on 3.1!)... a point in time at which the term website was most definitely not a common term. I know I was still spending most of my time in newsgroups and IRC at the time.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Andrewkov]

The post I replied to had no mention of the word Website..

Re:On the subject of Website...

[squiggleslash]

It does actually appear to have been a common term to describe, erm, websites: Examples. Of course, there weren't many in 1994.

There may not have been a massive number of mentions, the count is in the hundreds not thousands, but that appears to be the time the term started to become popular. So it looks like O'Reilly jumped on a technology that was emerging at that point, and decided to trademark a term already in use by those already using the technology.

That doesn't strike me as acceptable.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[morcheeba]

Netscape uses the terms "netsite" and "web browser" in its 1994 press releases, but not the term "website". In 95, they start using "web site".

Re:On the subject of Website...

[saddino]

To answer the big question:

1) There is nothing wrong with using everyday words as trademarks. Many consumer products do (just check out your supermarket aisles).

2) Trademarks, when applied for, must describe the market for their good and/or service. A trademark simply protects the good/service in that market, and does not stop anyone from using the word in any other context (or even for any other product/service, given some caveats, e.g. famous marks).

3) Trademarks need to be actively defended, so a C+D letter or even a lawsuit needs to be seen as a necessary requirement to defending a registered mark.

4) A trademark cannot be "held" to block others. A necessary requirement for keeping a trademark is production of your good and/or service. If you never produce anything, you'll lose the trademark. In other words, unscrupulous people aren't going to make much use of trademarks that they aren't actually using.

So, if "dot-net" is registered as a trademark (which it perfectly can), for say a software company or a web 2.0 service, it really doesn't affect anyone except /.ers who feel like getting worked about meaningless things.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[B11]

or "googling?"

Re:On the subject of Website...

[brainspank]

or maybe like "word", "excel", "office" and "windows"

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Gr8Apes]

your argument is flawed. Website, or web sites, followed the same common naming convention as gopher sites and ftp sites, both of which predate 1994 by quite a bit. Matter of fact, from the WWW mail archives:

              Marc Andreessen started working on the Mosaic web browser in 1992.

and also Google's search result comments indicate that WWW and W3 were already in use. The archives also indicate that Mosaic 1.2 was released by Apr 93, thus they had to have something to connect it to, unfortunately I was unable to access the mail archives, and thus could not ascertain what they called the server and documents and collections of documents they connected to at that time. I can't trust 13 year old memories as to whether we called it a "site" back then, but I seem to recall lots of references to ftp sites and such, so it would only be natural (Simtel was a big one in the day).

Re:On the subject of Website...

[ajs]

Website (one word) was not an every-day word at the time. In fact, even in the technical lingo, "Web site" (two words) was just a variant of "FTP site" which had been used for years, and not a stand-alone word.

Slashdot: News for people who were too stoned or too young to remember the mid-90s.

Sources: Before 1995, the word "website" was used less than 300 times on USENET. During the same time, the term "web site" was used over 5000 times. If you prowl through those uses of "web site" you will see that almost all of them are people who were talking about, but didn't quite understand the technology. I don't think the USPTO generally accepts infrequent mis-use or mis-spellings when considering a trademark.

In fact, there were even more people saying "world wide web site" before 2005.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[deathy_epl ccs]

The post I replied to had no mention of the word Website..

That's what this entire thread has been about.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[deathy_epl ccs]

I'm pretty sure we did call them sites, but my point was that they were not common in the way that was meant by the article I was responding to... it was a pretty obscure term for a technology that hadn't finished catching on quite yet - especially by the mainstream like it is today.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Haeleth]

Tim O'Reilly and his Web 2.0 trademark are now being seen for what they really are - evil attempts at forcing others out of his industry (technology publishing) by trademarking the jargin related to it.

The Web 2.0 trademark is specifically restricted to two fields: "Arranging and conducting live events, namely, trade shows, expositions and business conferences in various fields, namely, computers, communications, and information technology", and "Organizing and conducting educational conferences, tutorials and workshops in the fields of computers, communication and information technology."

So, Tim O'Reilly won't let you use the term "Web 2.0" as a name for a conference. Forgive me, but I can't for the life of me see how this is going to restrict your ability to compete in the publishing industry.

The trademark is completely irrelevant to the whole field of publishing. You can publish books on Web 2.0 to your heart's content, because O'Reilly does not claim any rights to the name in any sense whatsoever except in the incredibly specific context of computer-related conferences. You can use the name in any way you like, you can say anything you like about it, you can publish a thousand pages consisting of nothing other than the name repeated over and over again in very small letters - provided solely that you do not choose it as the name for a computer-related conference.

Exactly how does this restrict other technical publishers? Exactly where does the evil come into this picture?

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Kelson]

Another poster did a bit more digging and found, prior to 1995, ~20 times as many instances of "web site" (two words, ~5400 hits) than "website" (one word, ~250 hits).

So the phrase in common use at the time was, apparently, "web site," with "website" being a misspelling. It's funny how quickly usage changed.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[soliptic]

As I read this, you are at +4.

Your sig: Too many posts hit +4.

Rather apt in this case I think, considering your examples are obviously words which were not "real" everyday words and then got trademarked, but invented trademarks which BECAME everyday words.

The only thing more bizarre than you not realising that, is apparently 2-3 other slashdot users not realising it either.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Bing Tsher E]

I haven't bough O'Reilly books for a while, and I'm certainly not going to be after learning about this. O'Reilly can burn in Hell for all I care.

That's fine then. You're probably more inclined toward books with higher screenshot content anyway. If you don't 'get it' to the degree that you seem to be indicating, you probably only bought Windows-oriented O'Reilly books in the first place.

Stick with '..For Dummies' books, and stuff from Microsoft Press.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[tadghin]

Well, actually, the company that coined the term blog did in fact trademark it. Have you ever heard of blogger.com (now owned by Google)?

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya know, I think that just may, possibly, have been his point: "website" could have been non-generic at the time it was trademarked and later became generic though popular use.

I don't buy it (read the rest of the thread for counter-examples suggesting it already was generically used), but I'd assume that was the entire point.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Eivind]

Furthermore, the protection you get, and the ease of defending a trademark is somewhat proportional to the term used. This is so because it's much easier to argue that a competitor is likely to, and indeed intending to create confusion with your brand if your brand is an arbitrary invented term and your competitors is very similar.

If you produced pullovers under the trademarked name "FrobbyZalt(tm)" you're going to have a good case against the competitor that start selling t-shirts under the name "Frobbysalt".

If, on the other hand you produce the "Yummy(tm)" cake, you're going to have no case at all against a competitor that describes the food he produces as yummy.

In rough order of ease-of-protection;

• Purely invented terms, not similar to any descriptive word. ("FrobbyZalt pullovers")
• Words that you did not invent, but which are arbitrary for the product-class you use it for. ("Apple computers")
• Words that are suggestive of the product or properties of the product. ("Salty sailing-gear")
• Words that are descriptive of the product. ("salty crackers") such terms are *usually* not trademarkable at all, unless you can clearly show that that particular term is already clearly connected with your product in the marketplace)
• Generic words, not trademarkable at all. You can't trademark "flour", "salt" or "webserver" used for those products.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, they were only trying to trademark the term "website" as applied to, um, websites.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Gr8Apes]

Well, let's say I was sitting down at a computer in 1980. There weren't many computers, so I should have been able to trademark "Computer" and then sue everyone everywhere?

Re:On the subject of Website...

[deathy_epl ccs]

Well, let's say I was sitting down at a computer in 1980. There weren't many computers, so I should have been able to trademark "Computer" and then sue everyone everywhere?

Invalid argument. The term computer had been in use for a good 50 years before that time. If you were to have tried to trademark the term "Computer" in, say, the 1930s then you might have had a valid trademark - though the term had been in use for quite some time (centuries) before that to refer to an individual who performed mathematics with mechanical aid, such as an abacus.

Before the advent of the World Wide Web, there was no previous meaning to the word "website."

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Gr8Apes]

and therein lies the rub - the trademark was post WWW and the web, and by extension, the term "web site", which was commonly used by those working with the technology.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[deathy_epl ccs]

and therein lies the rub - the trademark was post WWW and the web, and by extension, the term "web site", which was commonly used by those working with the technology.

Post by a very short period of time. Was the term website actually in use before then? Was it commonly used? I don't know, and quite frankly I don't care. My point in all this has just been that there's a big difference between a term that's been used for a very long time and a term that has not actually reached common use yet.

I understand that everyone here has political reasons for being pissy about this, and I don't disagree with those... but the argument being used in this case is not particularly valid based on how they are being used. Not quite as invalid as when people got angry at them for having a trademark on the term Web 2.0, which they coined, but still...

Hell, wanna get pissy at them? Get pissy about how much their books have gone south! (I bet that one really starts folks flaming me now. heheheheh)

Re:On the subject of Website...

[chromatic]

That's not how trademark works. Why do you think trademark works that way?

Re:On the subject of Website...

[Gr8Apes]

The thing is - words in use to describe something should not have the ability to be Trademarked for that respective industry.

Regarding O'Reilly books: I quit buying them a while ago. I'm sure I'm not alone, and that will hopefully get their attention. As far as book quality goes, that's something that seems to affect the entire book industry at the moment. There are very few decent books out there. Many are the same empty tripe, and it's usually obsolete tripe by the time it's published. A definite issue in our current superfast paced growth.

Re:On the subject of Website...

[deathy_epl ccs]

The thing is - words in use to describe something should not have the ability to be Trademarked for that respective industry.

The trademark only covers the name of their (now defunct) web server, not any use of the term website. So nobody else would be able to create a web server and call it "Website". That's it. It's not like they were trademarking the general term... if you go and look at the trademark application, it quite specifically mentions that it refers to their web server software. Trademarks do not give universal domain to a term, only very specific domain in one area of trade.

Additionally, if they had had evil intentions for the trademark (assuming they could afford to legally obfuscate the issue enough by dragging the case out until their opponents folded, which I'm not so sure of in the case of O'Reilly), I would've thought they'd have already started execution of their nefarious plans. ;-)

As far as books go, though... I've gotten to the point these days where the only computer books I'll buy are WROX. Hopefully they'll stay awesome for a while.

Web 2.0 trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well trademark the equivant phrase "overhyped vaporware"!

Re:Web 2.0 trademark

[Stealth Dave]

Sorry, but that trademark has already been awarded.

- Stealth Dave

P.S. - Kudos to the DNF web team for creative use of the <blink> tag!

Re:Web 2.0 trademark

[EnsilZah]

Isn't that already taken by Microsoft?

The "Netizens" & the "Hactivists" Go "Wardrivi

[RobotRunAmok]

...and are never heard from again. Maybe they get infected with "virii."

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

In all seriousness...

[Mongoose Disciple]

When did O'Reilly stop being about making quality books and stuff and start being about creating buzzwords and catchphrases (Web 2.0, bleh.) and trademarking them?

There was a time when I'd buy an O'Reilly book to learn a new technology; now I mostly just find resources on the web via Google. I half-seriously wonder if lots of other developers made the same transition and eroded O'Reilly's original and sane-seeming business model.

Re:In all seriousness...

[masklinn]

I think most devs still read books, but O'Reilly's collection is only used for the classics (the camel book for example), there are quite a few other publishers with very good stuff.

Re:In all seriousness...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just download their books from Russian websites and eMule. Cheaper and easier.

Re:In all seriousness...

[neura]

Yeah, about the time they had their legal team prevent another conference from using "Web 2.0" in the name of the conference, I cancelled my safari subscription and I will never buy another book from them, again.

Now it's looking more and more like the right choice.

@O'Reilly: GG NEWBS

Re:In all seriousness...

[nuzak]

> When did O'Reilly stop being about making quality books and stuff and start being about creating buzzwords and catchphrases (

Around the time the "Hacks" series came out. Those are some seriously crappy books, almost without exception.

Manning Press has some really nice books out these days with the "In Action" series.

Re:In all seriousness...

[Stringer Bell]

I was surprised by the general shittiness of Ruby In a Nutshell. I found it difficult to use to actually learn ruby. On a co-worker's recommendation, I picked up a copy of Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide, which I've been much more happy with.

That's the first O'Reilly book I've encountered that's been so thoroughly unsatisfactory. A shame, really. I'd like to believe this is an exception to the rule rather than the harbinger of a general downard trend in the quality of O'Reilly books.

Re:In all seriousness...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given up on O'Reilly in favor of Apress and Manning. Apress seems to have the most dev titles nowadays

Re:In all seriousness...

[wazzzup]

To be fair, the Nutshell series is more of a reference rather than an instructional book. The page counts belie that fact - 218 for the O'Rielly book and 864 for the Pragmatic Bookshelf title.

It's interesting that O'Reilly doesn't publish an instructional book for Ruby.

Re:In all seriousness...

[Bing Tsher E]

And here I thought it was when they started publishing comic books, and stuff by Eric Raymond.

Actually, an O'Reilly book still has a default ring of quality about it. The classics are the most important, though. You can configure your entire X Window System using the O'Reilly book set and have a rather nice system. Without the bloat of the new crap. Tab Window Manager rulez.

O RLY? YA RLY!

[knight37]

Its good to know that our language is being protected by these companies.

Re:Interesting show

[JBHarris]

I wish I could mod my own post, -1 offtopic and -10,000 dumbass who didn't RTFA.

Sorry,
Brad

Re:O'rielly is just a guy

[OverlordQ]

Looks like you need a book, one called a Dictionary.

The End of Make?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I guess all the anti-trademark Boing-Boing hipsters involved with Make Magazine will be quitting in protest?

Sounds like

[smithfarm]

Sounds like O'Reilly has unwittingly given IT@Cork massive publicity for their conference!

please trademark netizens and website

[192939495969798999]

Dear O'Reilly: Please trademark netizens and Website. Also, feel free to flip through the dictionary and trademark any other dumb word you can. Then, sue everyone that uses those words. The legal system will be so inundated that I'll get tons more work as an IT consultant implementing test cases or what have you for the cases.
Thanks,
signed everyone

oh please please *crosses fingers*

[Anonymous Coward]

Please trademark "GINORMOUS" .. please.. and defend it vigorously.

Re:oh please please *crosses fingers*

[Anonymous Coward]

... and the verb 'leverage' where it means jack shit else than 'use'.

Re:oh please please *crosses fingers*

[kinglink]

I'd give money to the legal defense of that trademark.

Also "slippery slope" everyone uses it to defend anything they don't like. There's a couple more I could definatly live with out too.

Re:oh please please *crosses fingers*

[kaizenfury7]

It has come to our attention that you have leveraged* the word 'ginormous' in your Slashdot post dated August 22. Through this post, you are misrepresenting* and readers are given the direct and false impression that you are providing them with an intelligent reply with a humoristic* upside*.

We hereby demand that you immediately cease and desist from using 'ginormous' in your posts and from making further any use of the word in future posts or any word that uses similar letters, pronunciation, and spelling. We further demand that you provide us with written assurance within ten days that you will cease to use the word in future posts. If these demands are not met, you may face a ginormous(tm) fine and possible jail time.

* Trademark pending

Re:oh please please *crosses fingers*

[Creedo]

Everyone knows that it was used by Jazz to describe Unicron: "ginormous weird looking planet."

Yayy

[joshetc]

Thank god, now finally the damn buzz-word will be gone forever.

On a related note, does that mean I could trademark something like "Apple 8.7" just for fun?

Re:Yayy

[rainman_bc]

Thank god, now finally the damn buzz-word will be gone forever.

Now what'll we use to impress C level management??? Hard work??? I want more jargon! All I have left is Ajax!

Re:Yayy

[MrCopilot]

Now what'll we use to impress C level management??? Hard work??? I want more jargon! All I have left is Ajax!

Sorry Ajax is a registered trademark of Colgate. http://www.colgate.com/app/Colgate/US/HC/Products/ HouseholdCleaners/Ajax.cvsp

Re:Yayy

[Anonymous Coward]

And what C level manager wouldn't be impressed by that kind of cleaning power?

heh; actually

[geekoid]

I need sleep. I only got 2 hours last night.

So, no more posting for me today.

Re:heh; actually

[daeley]

I need sleep. I only got 2 hours last night.

That's why you're a geekoid instead of a geek -- real geeks don't sleep. ;D

Web Shite(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality of Web2.0(tm)

What's wrong with a trademark?

[PCM2]

When you apply for a trademark, you are applying for exclusive use of a given mark for a particular business area. If O'Reilly registers the phrase "Maker Faire" as a trademark for the business of trade conferences, what exactly is wrong with that? Most people wouldn't argue that it would probably be wrong for somebody to start up some mom-n-pop copy store and call it "FedEx Kinko's." They can't do that, because the real FedEx Kinko's has registered that mark as a trademark. Similarly, if O'Reilly invests a considerable amount of money to organize, advertise, staff, and otherwise produce a trade show and they have decided on a name for that trade show, why on earth should they not trademark that name?? If some "Irish scallywag" moved to Palo Alto next week and threw together a fly-by-night trade show under the name "Maker Faire," how could it conceivably not damage the equity O'Reilly has invested in that brand? Protecting business investments is the purpose of trademarks.

NEWS FLASH: The name "Slashdot" is trademarked. Shock! Horror!

Re:What's wrong with a trademark?

[jamsessionjay]

Didn't the World Wildlife Fund bring a lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation for trademark infringement? And the whole Apple computer company fight against the Apple record label? These are hardly in the same category, but lawsuits were still brought up and won.

Re:What's wrong with a trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea of patents is to patent something that YOU personally created. If O'Reilly did, in fact, create the term "Maker Faire" then they have every right try to protect it. However (and I don't know) if they're just trying to patent a phrase that they heard someone else say or is common lexicon, or waited until a random phrase they made up has made it into common lexicon before trying to patent it, then they are just trying to patent common words that many people use so they can sue them.
Patenting of a word in the common lexicon should always be denied.
If you create a new word and want to protect it, then you should apply for a patent on that word the moment you slap it on some product of yours, and long before it becomes common lexicon.

Re:What's wrong with a trademark?

[ttldkns]

apple v appleonly came up because apple computers were using their apple logo on the iTunes music store. Now you'll notice apple records is in the music industry and hence apple computers was treading on their turf. Same indusrty, hence the trademark suit.

Re:What's wrong with a trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

apple v. apple came up a long time ago (google it) and was settled, as long as Apple Computers stayed out of publishing music. It came up AGAIN because Apple Records saw the iTMS as Apple Computer entering the music publishing industry.

Re:What's wrong with a trademark?

[Bing Tsher E]

Actually, the Apple trademark dispute came up years ago, in the Apple II era. Apple Music settled with Apple Computers with an agreement that Apple Computer would never enter the music distributing business. It is just mean spirited backstabbing for Apple Computer to now enter the music distributing business. But it's the kind of ball Apple Computer plays. They ran all the small diverse 'Windowed GUI Computing Environment' companies out of business in the 80's, you know, delivering ownership of the 'One GUI to conquer us all' to Microsoft in the process. Apple Computer has never, ever, been a very ethical business, except in the ways that their marketing department tells them they should.

These make sense

[Plutor]

1) Maker Faire, Netizen, and Web 2.0 are all registered for a single use: Conferences. They named a conference and they should be allowed to protect that name. If someone started running their own thing and couldn't come up with a name so they called it E3 or PCExpo, you'd expect the holders of those trademarks to sue, no?

2) The "Website" trademark application was also for a single use, in this case "computer software used to create a server on a global computer network..". Apparently, O'Reilly used to make a piece of software called "Website Professional", and it was this uninspired name they were trying to protect. Again, color me unsurprised.

This entire argument has gone back and forth a million times already, so it's kind of pointless. People who are anti-trademarks will argue that this is word-squatting and that "netizen" and "web 2.0" are public domain words. People who aren't will argue that the trademarks only cover their original uses by O'Reilly and thus using the word(s) netizen on a website or a newspaper or even the cover of a best-selling book is not infringement.

Re:These make sense

[Bing Tsher E]

It's an interesting historical note to mention that the company that really, really disliked O'Reilly's 'Website' package (an all-in-one-retail-box method of rolling out a website in the early days) was Microsoft. It was a Web Server package that you could install on any plain old version of Windows NT. Microsoft didn't like this because they wanted to sell server versions of NT, and expensive client access licenses. They didn't WANT people being able to put a cheap NT Workstation online and use somebody else's software to make it a Web Server.

Great!

[Screwy1138]

We need more of this. The more obviously fraudulent patent claims that go in, the closer we'll get to patent reform.

Seriously.

Re:Great!

[Brunellus]

patent!=trademark

Dang, didn't realize...

[Cheetahfeathers]

It's April 1st again already? ;P

Re:Interesting show

[Anonymous Coward]

That and you just attacked the hell out of Papa Bear. You're bound to incur the wrath of the Colbert Nation with that post. :)

MAKER FAIRE is an OK trademark

[CalvinLawson]

OK, unless you're of the "trademarks are evil" school, it seems like there's nothing wrong with this. In "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Raymond talks about how he and O'Reilly tried to trademark the term "Open Source", and have it defined by the OSD. His reasoning was that there would be legal recourse against people using the term open source when not actually opening their source code. And after seeing shenanigans of this sort (Sun, anyone?), this makes perfect sense.

Re:MAKER FAIRE is an OK trademark

[RomulusNR]

In "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Raymond talks about how he and O'Reilly tried to trademark the term "Open Source", and have it defined by the OSD.

Classic cabalism. "My personal circle of associates are superior to the rest of you, so it is right and just for us to solely dictate." Wasn't James Coburn in a movie or two about the problems of prejudicial wonkocracy? Let's not even get into the anti-openness of such a move (which is especially ironic for the term "open source") -- I'm sure it's been said.

Reason #1239746 why I dislike Raymondism.

Re:MAKER FAIRE is an OK trademark

[syousef]

Trademarks are evil when used like this. You should have to come up with a name for your product that's hard to mistake for common everyday language before you can apply for a trademark. When you do get a trademark it should simply be there to protect some other loser from making an inferior product and trying to pawn it off as your won.

Oh, and stop quoting from that essay. The analogy wasn't that good back in the .com boom, and its even less relevant now. The antique shop and the hippy commune would have been just as good an analogy (ie. it isn't good).

patents != trademark

[pavon]

Common editors, you have been doing this for how long, and you still don't know the difference between patents and trademarks?

Re:patents != trademark

[Kelson]

USPTO = United States Patent and Trademark Office.

This means that in the US:
Patent Office = USPTO
Trademark Office = USPTO

So, even though patent != trademark, we can still conclude that:
Patent Office = Trademark Office

Re:patents != trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "common" refers to something that is easily obtainable. When used to refer to people, it's a put-down of the lower classes by the upper class -- to be common is to lack distinction or taste. The Slashdot editors may indeed be common, but that is not what you meant to say.

You meant to use the two-word phrase "come on," which is an exclamation demanding that someone give up their pretense and/or commence with action.

Many people slur the phrase so that it sounds like one word. To render this dialect in print, an apostrophe is often used: "C'mon."

Re:patents != trademark

[FormOfActionBanana]

You just assigned Trademark Office to Patent Office.

I think you meant to conclude that Patent Office == Trademark Office.

Now we leave it as an exercise to the reader to check my grammar and apostrophes.

Re:patents != trademark

[Error27]

No. The headline was misleading and sucky.

Patent law is important but complaining about trademarks is for weenies.

Re:patents != trademark

[Senzei]

Common editors, you have been doing this for how long, and you still don't know the difference between patents and trademarks?

Hey, with any luck we'll get some uncommon editors here ... maybe they know the difference.

Declining quality of O'Reilly books

[Anonymous Coward]

The older O'Reilly books were good, but I've been disappointed with their newer books. It just seems like the quality has been dropping. Lately I've been buying more books from Wrox and Manning than from O'Reilly.

O'Reilly Lawyers Set Up Shop in the Patent Office

[MarkByers]

On the same day Netizens fumed over the trademarking of Web 2.0 (R), lawyers for O'Reilly were beating a path to the USPTO to file for a trademark on MAKER FAIRE, lest some Irish scallywag try to co-opt that catchy phrase for a conference. Speaking of NETIZENS, USPTO records show O'Reilly once sought a trademark for that term. And while details are sketchy, USPTO records also indicate that O'Reilly not only sought to trademark the term WEBSITE, it was the plaintiff in a scheduled Trademark Trial involving a defendant who laid claim to the phrase WEB CITE.

So what does this have to do with Patents? It's the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Are you trying to confuse us on purpose?

Hi, I'm Lizzy Fair

[spun]

Have you people never heard of the tragedy of the commons? Words and phrases that are owned "collectively" will be mismanaged into meaninglessness. Ideally, every possible combination of characters and punctuation will be owned by someone. Only then will our words be safe from the evil communists seeking to collectivize our precious language.

Comment from 2016

[CheeseburgerBrown]

Slashdot is one of my favourite [REDACTED], because it keeps me informed on all the recent developments in the exciting fields of [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and Doctor Who.

I use my [REDACTED]-aggregator for quick access to all of the cool articles, and then follow the underlined [REDACTED] to other [REDACTED] with related information! Easy as 1-2-[REDACTED]!

Of course, paying the IP tax to read certain words like [REDACTED], [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] can be a bit of a pain, but [I HEARTILY ENDORSE ALL ACTIONS OF THE PATENT OFFICE]!

Your friend,
[REDACTED]

Re:Comment from 2016

[multisync]

you forgot to redact your sig

Re:Comment from 2016

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooh, a Mad-Lib:

Slashdot is one of my favourite doo-doos, because it keeps me informed on all the recent developments in the exciting fields of humping, toast, and Doctor Who.

I use my farts-aggregator for quick access to all of the cool articles, and then follow the underlined doofus to other hard-ons with related information! Easy as 1-2-69!

Of course, paying the IP tax to read certain words like retarded, gay and smelly can be a bit of a pain, but YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY!

Your friend,
Madonna

Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[unity100]

And the lawsuits has to be class action lawsuits. So that nobody should be able to try to patent a PUBLIC, EVERYDAY word and get away unscathed even they are unsuccessful.

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't patent a word. You can however, be granted a trademark to PROTECT a good or service in a market that you produce.

Furthermore, PUBLIC, EVERYDAY words are trademarked ALL THE TIME and HAVE BEEN FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS and that fact hasn't hurt you one bit.

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[chromatic]

So that nobody should be able to try to patent a PUBLIC, EVERYDAY word...

I realize the difference between a patent and a trademark is exceedingly subtle, but you can tell them apart because they're completely different things. (I was lying about the difference being subtle.)

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[unity100]

This argument was put exactly the same way against my view before. I will reply by quoting my own reply then :

Au contraire, 1) Believing that a generic word cannot be used as a trademark; Just because some law has been passed by any assembly does not mean that the law is just and sound. Just like the net neutrality in u.s. - they who pay, make the law. Using of generic words as a trademark monopolizes the use of that word in benefit of the tm. holding company. You can not use it without permission from them without breaking the current i.p. laws. Read below. 2) Assuming that a trademark "stops" use of the mark in conversation; and Actually it does. However no corporation is seeking any damages against you or any other ordinary people who uses those GENERIC words that have been taken under monopoly, because you do not generate any damages in their eyes. If, you, or some number of people would seem to be doing so, they would. And they do, just like what apple is doing now. 3) For not understanding anything about law, yet commenting on it. As per the above points, it is clear that you are the one who do not have understanding of the law Apparently, you think that any concept being approved by an particular assembly should be right - which is absolute fallacy. Would it be right and constitutional if current u.s. congress and senate had passed laws that reinstates aristocracy in u.s., and declares congressmen, senators and their close circles counts, dukes earls accordingly, and conferred kingship to w.bush ? It would be unconstutitional right ? Lets have a look at the case at hand - a generic word, is now OWNED by some company. In its current situation, theres NOTHING barring that company seeking damages from you if you used the word 'pod' in conversation anywhere, lest they think they might have some interest in going for trashing you. Is it constutitional ? NO ! why ? Because almost 30% of the words you NEED to use in your daily speech, are owned by innumerable corporations and trading entities. This is a situation that gives the option to BAR the INSTRUMENT OF SPEECH, WORDS, let alone freedom of speech - they are just not doing it. --

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

And, again, you are completely misunderstanding trademarks. Trademarks DO NOT LIMIT USE OF THE TRADEMARK IN ANY CONTEXT EXCEPT in a competing product and/or service.

This isn't a freedom of speech issue. Nobody owns words. Nobody can stop you from using any word. Trademark is about brand protection ONLY. Educate yourself.

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[unity100]

So ? How come apple is able to go after other products, for just containing the term 'pod' ?

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the standard for trademark infringement is only that something has to be confusingly similar; not exact. Go ahead and start selling Doca Dola and see how fast Coca Cola slams you down.

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[unity100]

Unfortunately, at the least, this "confusingly similar" comparison has no definitive meaning, and can and does fluctuate with time and place.

Even if that wasnt so, in any case the concept that you might be sued for saying something with an everyday word that is being used in a context that is 'confusingly similar' to a brand name, would prove that it can be detrimental to concept of SPEECH, let alone freedom of speech.

Re:Such Patent Abusers should be sued

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if that wasnt so, in any case the concept that you might be sued for saying something with an everyday word that is being used in a context that is 'confusingly similar' to a brand name, would prove that it can be detrimental to concept of SPEECH, let alone freedom of speech.

You may want to read up on trademarks. You cannot be sued for "saying something with an everyday word that is being used in a context that is 'confusingly similar' to a brand name."

You can only be sued for producing a good or service that is 1) in the same market as the trademark holder and 2) confusingly similar to the trademark.

This is not a freedom of speech issue. You can say iPod as much as you want. You can publish the word iPod in a newspaper. But you cannot sell a multimedia device called MP3Pod.

Obligatory

[jrmiller84]

Doesn't matter, he's still a blubbering vagina.

Re:Obligatory

[joe 155]

Whilst BILL O'Reilly may or may not be a vagina (I have no feelings either way), I would say that TIM isn't.

For more info see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Reilly_Media

...Still, the article was funny, if not miss-placed

Not OReilly's fault

[cl0r0x70]

As a small business owner, I know that often you have to file patents and trademarks defensively.

In other words, it may not be that O'Reilly particularly wants to grab the term and vindictively go after people who use it, but rather that they felt the need to trademark the phrase to protect themselves from someone who may try to do it first and then go after them. My guess is that any name O'Reilly chose would've been trademarked, regardless of how novel it was.

This is probably more a product of our ridiculous trademark/patenting/copyright system than O'Reilly par se.

Re:Not OReilly's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not O'Reilly's fault they want to trademark "website" and "netizens"?

Give me a break. There is no legal imperative to do that.

Re:Not OReilly's fault

[squiggleslash]

You don't have to file trademarks defensively. Well, let me rephrase that. If you're building a product that has an entirely new name, never before used in relation to your market area, then yeah, you need to file a trademark to ensure nobody else starts making things with the same name. Though it's arguable that's "defensive". You're defending your product against knock-offs, but you're not trademarking it for the same reason as someone might defensively file a patent. That is, you're not doing it so that if someone sues you for trademark infringement, you can sue them right back.

Defensive patents are an entirely different area. People file patents so that if someone sues them, they have some potential ammunition against them. For example, ACME Sandwiches sues you for violating their Cheese Between Two Slices of Bread patent, you in turn can see that they have a wide range of sandwiches, some of which violate your own patents, you can sue them back for violating your "Peanut butter between two slices of Ryvita" patent.

O'Reilly isn't really being "defensive" here. He's taking words that relate to things he's doing conferences on, and trademarking them. The net effect is to make it harder to come up with relevent terms to describe competing conferences. That's really being offensive, not defensive. It's not a good thing.

Re:Not OReilly's fault

[chromatic]

He's taking words that relate to things he's doing conferences on, and trademarking them. The net effect is to make it harder to come up with relevent terms to describe competing conferences.

Wrong.

"Maker Faire" is the name of the event. Trademarking the name of the event gives ORM legal status as the only entity who can hold an event with that name.

If you want to hold a similar event, come up with another name.

What's sinister and offensive about that?

Lawyers

[olddotter]

Patents, Trademarks, and Lawyers might all be a form of legal cancer. Worse its a cancer you can only defend against by getting cancer yourself.

They are all cancerous growths on society.

That Potato Farming Bastard!!!

[eno2001]

Bill O'Reilly really makes my blood boil. He's such a BIG FAT LIAR it's so sad! Now he's trying to do something to the patent system too! What's he gonna do, get the Fox security team on their cases?

Re:That Potato Farming Bastard!!!

[redneckHippe]

Keith is that you?
R.H.

Re:That Potato Farming Bastard!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Bill O'Reilly posting here. I want to make it perfcetly clear that when you post on Slashdot, they have your IP addresses. And thanks to the patriot act, I can get those addresses immediately because I'm really working for the Bush administration even though I say I'm not. And when we get those IP addresses, we're gonna submit them to Fox Security and you're gonna be getting a little call. Because you're harrassing me every time you talk about Keith Olbermann. You'll be getting a little visit from some men in uniform. And you're gonna be in a lotta trouble. I'm Bill O'Reilly and no one messes with me because I'm looking at you, err looking out for you.

They who trademark clipart

[Black Art]

O'Reilly has all sorts of "interesting" trademarks. They have trademarked the Camel on the Perl books. (You know, the one(s) taken from the Dover Animals clipart book.) They will trademark just about anything if they think it will give them an "edge".

I wonder just how much they pay to Dover for all the clipart they use on their covers that have been taken from Dover clipart books. Damn little I bet.

Re:They who trademark clipart

[PhysicsPhil]

O'Reilly has all sorts of "interesting" trademarks. They have trademarked the Camel on the Perl books.

Considering that many people refer to the O'Reilly perl books simply as "the camel book" and the "llama book", I don't think O'Reilly is out of line. Clearly people (or at least IT people) mentally link the O'Reilly perl book to the image of the camel (and llama), so a trademark is perfectly reasonable.

Re:They who trademark clipart

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder just how much they pay to Dover for all the clipart they use on their covers that have been taken from Dover clipart books. Damn little I bet.

That's kind of the point of clipart.

O'Reilly has a track record of this kind of thing

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't surpise me in the least that O'Reilly is doing this, nor that they sought to trademark the term WEBSITE.

A while back, O'Reilly also filed a lawsuit against Manning Publishing for using animals on the book covers. Ridiculous, and a nasty thing to do against a smaller (but excellent) publishing company. In case you didn't know, they won that round too, and Manning changed their covers.

Pigs.

Look out, you had better not publish anything with the word "Reference" in it, or you could be sued by O'Reilly.

This is all just so ludicrous.

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

I agree that companies should be allowed to protect the names of their products to make sure they are not used by other companies for their products, be they similar to the Original (in which case we would speak of plagiarism) or completely different (in which case they might still make unfair use of the original companie's product's fame). That's what trademarks are for.

But I think this is a very limited scope. A trademark should, in my opinion, not allow you to forbid anyone to simply _use_ the name of your product (as opposed to stick it to their own products). Words are symbolic representations of the sounds we make with our tongues while speaking. They are free like the wind. Imagine Microsoft would sue a carpenter because he sold windows. The fine line lies in the difference between using a word as a name and a word as a word. You cannot trademark words. If you could, Shakespeare's heirs would have a nice source of income from about every native English-speaker in the world. How is a "maker fair" or a "web site" a name? They are just words. "Microsoft Windows" is a name. "Windows" is not. "Dodge Ram" is a name. "dodge" and "ram" are words.

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Goddammit, thank you.

I simply cannot believe people are trying this crap.. and I can fathom even less that they're getting away with it.

What next, every word we speak will be trademarked or copyrighted in some fashion so that merely communicating will cost an arm and a leg?

Where the hell does it end?

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[OhBoy!]

How is a "maker fair" or a "web site" a name? They are just words. "Microsoft Windows" is a name. "Windows" is not. "Dodge Ram" is a name. "dodge" and "ram" are words.

"maker fair" is a name. "maker" and "fair" are not. "web site" is a name. "web" and "site" are words.

Trademarks are necessity consist of one or more words. Whether it is a word or not is not the question. For a made-up word that doesn't exist in dictionary, the argument is fairly easy - there was no word for iPod or Microsoft before some marketing department invented it. But for words that are part of common language (and that would include dodge and ram and windows), it gets a lot more complicated.

Discuss.

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[chromatic]

A trademark should, in my opinion, not allow you to forbid anyone to simply _use_ the name of your product (as opposed to stick it to their own products).

What does that have to do with anything?

If the "Maker Faire" trademark goes through, my employer has the exclusive right to put on a fair called "Maker Faire". That's it.

You can get a tattoo of the phrase anywhere on your body. You can put it on a hot air balloon. You can write a dirty limerick about it and set it to music. You can draw a really freaky logo with those words, like maybe with a snake and a skull and an evil looking parrot.

Just don't expect that if you start your own fair or trade show and call it "Maker Faire" that everything's going to be okay. You'll probably have to change the name.

I'm pretty sure there weren't more than, well, zero people just dying to start their own Maker Faires, as evidenced by the fact that they, well, didn't, so I'm having a difficult time figuring out exactly what the fuss is about.

How is a "maker fair" or a "web site" a name? They are just words.

Did you read the trademark summaries? Did you think about them? Or is it the case that your knee merely jerked so hard that you typed and submitted that entire rant before understanding the applications? (That's my vote.)

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[darkmeridian]

Trademarks are granted protection only within the field occupied by the originator of the term. The concept of trademarks is to protect consumers against confusion by the unscrupulous. Such protection provides an incentive for originators of the trademark to police the term, and more importantly, to build up a brand. Therefore, Windows has a trademark over "Windows" for "windowing operating systems". Microsoft can't sue me for using "Windows" for my shoe company, for instance.

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[indil]

I agree. Trademarks are an artifical rule created by society, not some inalienable or natural right or protection. It's not meant to be a form of thought or speech control. I always thought the original intent of the provision for trademarks by law was to protect consumers against someone trying to make their product look like someone else's product. So while Apple can hold the "Apple" registered trademark for a computer company to protect its customers from buying fake "Apple" computers from others, it cannot prevent apple growers from selling/saying "apples" or a company in another business using the name "Apple" (correct me if I'm wrong here).

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they can. In theory they'd also be guaranteed to lose but they do have extremely expensive lawyers.

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

For a made-up word that doesn't exist in dictionary, the argument is fairly easy - there was no word for iPod or Microsoft before some marketing department invented it.

But, as DancesWithBlowTorch reminded us above, the point is not (or rather, is not supposed to be) whether a name can be used in the right context, it is to prevent the name being abused by someone who is essentially trading on the good name of another.

This is why I remain to be convinced about things like the old mikerowesoft site. Sure, it was a good joke, but was anyone really going to mistake a site with a cute name by a guy named Mike Rowe for the world's biggest software company? Of course not. It seems that the kid in question was happy with how that case worked out, but it's absurd that the Microsoft lawyers even had a credible case.

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

"Apple" is perhaps an unfortunate example, being the name of both a computer company and a music company whose worlds collided with the invention of iTunes...

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

From a lawyer's point of view, you are perfectly right. Unfortunately, it seems that society has, somewhere along the way, diluted the concept of a trademark to "I own this word".

If everybody would understand the term "trademark" in the way you do it, why is this even on /.? Scroll down the comments: More than half of the readers seem to think O'Reilly has somehow seized the words "website". Sometimes, we need to be remembered of the way laws were meant to be.

Re:This is all just so ludicrous.

[chromatic]

More than half of the readers seem to think O'Reilly has somehow seized the words "website".

That's the part that still boggles me. There are plenty of comments from people who obviously don't know (and given how much work it is to look up similarly simple concepts even on Wikipedia, obviously don't care) about the difference between a patent and a trademark.

I don't understand why these people think their opinions matter so much that they're worth typing and submitting to Slashdot. I really don't.

I can understand asking for clarification or specific details, but the rest still makes my head spin.

Re:O'rielly is just a guy

[Anonymous Coward]

What animal is that book?

Yes, it's time to boycott O'Reilly

[Anonymous Coward]

Web 2.0 got the ball rolling, but apparently O'Reilly has been doing this for years. "Netizen?" "Website?!"

It's time. I haven't bought an O'Reilly book in ages (mostly because I haven't found any that appear to actually be useful), but seeing that O'Reilly has attempted to own common Internet jargon for years means it's time to step that up to an actual official boycott.

There's no reason anyone can give, anywhere, that can justify attempting to trademark "website". It'd be like attempting to trademark "kernel". It's just ridiculous.

And what's worse, they attempted to sue someone with a trademark on "web cite" that, while a bad pun, at least makes sense.

So, yes, it's time to officially start the boycott.

What happened, O'Reilly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your technical reference books used to be cool. Then, getting them on bittorrent was even cooler. Now, you're just not the same... What happened, O'Reilly???

Re:What's wrong with you?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't patent a word, idiot. Jesus, is everyone on Slashdot absolutely clueless about intellectual property???

Trademark != Patent != Copyright

Wikipedia if you must, but damn, teach yourself something before commenting on it.

What O'Reilly Should TM

[lbmouse]

IMHO the only thing O'Reilly is qualified to even attempt to trademark would be "Shitty Books" and/or "Crappy Conferences".

pft....yea...trademarks...

[Anonymous Coward]

doo doo dooo...hey where did that castle come from?

Next up!

[AdamWeeden]

BLOGOSPHERE!

Re:Next up!

[tehcyder]

BLOGOSPHERE!

I, for one, would happily set aside all my moral scruples about trademarks if it resulted in that word being removed from general discourse.

In fact, if a few innocent bystanders had to die in order for the same thing to happen...still OK by me.

Re:The "Netizens" & the "Hactivists" Go "Wardr

[MBGMorden]

Yeah. Hopefully they'll take all their "boxen" with them too.

WEB SITE(tm), WEB CITE(tm)...

[Mick Ohrberg]

...what about WEB SIGHT(sic)(tm)?

Whence the confusion may arise

[tepples]

You can't patent a word, idiot. Jesus, is everyone on Slashdot absolutely clueless about intellectual property???

The subject line of The Article mentions "the Patent Office". The USPTO handles trademarks in addition to patents.

The price is right...

[posterlogo]

I guess anyone can trademark Web 2.01 and screw these guys! But seriously, are they so dumb that they don't realize it's too late for Web 2.0? If you want to be ahead of the game, you gotta go Web 3.0. But I guess that'll be outdated too. Hmm... Assigning numerical appendages to cutesy words seems like a bad idea for a trademark/patent. BTW, if you use "Web 42.01" anywhere, you have to reference me.

What's the big deal

[osmifo]

A private, for-profit company is trying to make money through litigation. Surprise is a naive reaction to this story.

It is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh hell, where did I put that bananna?

C != the whole world

[tepples]

You just assigned Trademark Office to Patent Office.

Not everybody codes in C. Some code in Pascal or other languages where assignment is represented as := or <=. Some code in dialects of LISP where let and set! are used for creating variables. Some code in BASIC where = in an expression context means equality but = in a statement context means assignment. Some people code in Java, where using an assignment in the condition of an if or while loop results in a compile error of no automatic cast to boolean. Some people code for a C compiler that warns in the same case, such as GCC with -Wparentheses .

Re:C != the whole world

[tehcyder]

Not everybody codes in C

And not everyone thinks that an English sentence is supposed to be any sort of program code in the first place.

Always Remember to . . .

[freedomwrangler]

vote with your pocket book. Don't purchase products from companies that behave in a manner inconsistent with your principles. Without money they cannot hire lawyers. Without lawyers they cannot trademark or copyright material. However, without trademarked or copyrighted material jobs might be scarce. Wait a second . . .

Well...

[jar240]

The author's keyboard for SURE has a CAPS LOCK key!

Wrong purpose.

[raehl]

Protecting business investments is the purpose of trademarks.

Protecting the consumer's ability to identify the source of goods and services is the purpose of trademarks.

Re:Wrong purpose.

[PCM2]

Protecting the consumer's ability to identify the source of goods and services is the purpose of trademarks.

That's a pleasantly utopian view of the world, but if it's really about some sort of consumer-rights issue then the consumer ought to be the one paying to register the trademarks.

On the contrary. When I register a trademark for my business, the reason I'm doing it is to establish a unique identifier for my goods and services, true -- but the reason I do that is because I don't want some other company cannibalizing the market I have built for those goods and services by pretending to be me. The trademark protects the existing investment I have made in building that business. That's why I take the additional step of investing yet more capital into registering the trademark (a process that is not necessarily cheap).

Re:Wrong purpose.

[Todd Knarr]

Exactly. You want to protect the consumer's ability to identify the source of goods and services, specifically yours. When that consumer sees something with your trademark on it, you want it to be your item and not somebody else's using your name.

Re:Wrong purpose.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure this is a distinction with a difference.

BTW, according to the US Supreme Court,

"[T]rademark law, by preventing others from copying a source-identifying mark, 'reduce[s] the customer's cost's of shopping and making purchasing decisions,' for it quickly and easily assures a potential customer that the this item -- the item with this mark -- is made by the same producer as other similarly marked items that he or she liked (or disliked) in the past. At the same time, the law helps assure a producer that it (and not an imitating competitor) will reap the financial, reputation-related rewards associated with a desirable product." Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co, U.S. Supreme Court (1995).

Reference is from http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/trademrk.html.

O'RLY?

[anichan]

I wonder if they've tried to get "O'RLY?" as well...

Patent != Trademark

[Kr3m3Puff]

When did we start confusing Patents with Trademarks... They are quite different things. The title is very misleading.

Re:Patent != Trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what the T in USPTO means. Go on, guess.

Sue Me..... I Dare You.....

[IHC Navistar]

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0 Web 2.0

Ooooops! It looks like I didn't give credit to the creator of the word and number grouping Web 2.0 . Argh! I did it again! Please Satan, forgive me! Why has today become the Age Of The Lawsuit? It seems like now, it is legal and justified to sue anybody for anything over anything. People, and companies, need to get a grip on their lawyers, and lawyers need to understand they are not God.

-----

Sig Sauer

Ugh... One More Thing.....

[IHC Navistar]

Addtionally, how on Earth is is legal for corporations to exist that have the sole purpose of trademarking everything just so they can for people to buy licences from them? It's one thing to protect a product or service from being copied and abused by competitors, but a completely different thing to try to trademark generally used terms as a means of profiting principally from the use of the term itself, not the service or product.

-----

Sig Sauer

Re:Ugh... One More Thing.....

[chromatic]

It's one thing to protect a product or service from being copied and abused by competitors, but a completely different thing to try to trademark generally used terms as a means of profiting principally from the use of the term itself, not the service or product.

For example, such a strategy doesn't work.

You can't blame them

[indil]

Someone smarter than me in this area (a paralegal specializing in trademark law) commented:

"They registered the mark for services of arranging/conducting trade shows and business conferences in the fields of computers, communications and information. To register they had to provide evidence of use, so yes. They can only go after others who are using the mark for the same services, as they did when they sent the little nonprofit a cease and desist to stop using it for arranging conferences. So they were perfectly within their rights to assert their tm ownership where they saw infringement, as in fact, they are required to do in order to maintain those rights. However, they could not legitimately go after others using the same term for computers or for internet technology, since their registration is limited to the conference/trade show services. (Unless they decide to assert they have a 'famous' mark, in which case they may try to prevent others from using it for anything.) However, the standards for evidencing ownership of a 'famous' mark are very stringent, including areas of use, length of ownership, etc.

"It looks to me like they were ahead of the game in adopting a term that is so popular it's in danger of going generic. If the term was recognized at the time they filed as an industry term, then it was up to others to protest to the PTO when the mark was published for public review. To retain their rights, OReilly has to police usage, or just give up and acknowledge the name is in the public domain."

That's the last straw, Bill!

[lightspawn]

I'm never watching The O'Reilly Factor again.

You won't be sued.

[/dev/trash]

You need to change that to Web 2.0 Conference. Thats what they were protectin'

So

[Anonymous Coward]

They have sold their last book to me. Fuck them.

This is news?

[tadghin]

This is Tim O'Reilly:

I'm not surprised that theodp would submit this story, but I'm surprised that slashdot would run it. O'Reilly files trademarks is news? Especially trademarks that we filed over ten years ago?

A little bit of background on the specific trademark applications cited, either in the story or in the comments:

The trademark for Website -- which was, incidentally, the first Windows-based web server, back in 1995 -- was for a particular graphic mark -- the name website in red letters in a yellow oval in a kind of superman logo. It was not for generic use of the term.

I don't remember the trademark application for netizens (it was back in 1994), but I believe it was a joint project with the folks who originated the term to create an online directory of net citizens -- and was specific to that use.

Similarly, people commenting in the thread brought up the O'Reilly trademarks on animal book covers. Once again, people don't understand the concept of a trademark. It's not for any animal on the cover of a book, it's for a specific animal in a specific context -- say, the camel for Perl.

And as to the people who say, "O'Reilly shouldn't have exclusive rights to that association between perl and the camel, and the right to say who can use it", I say, "why not?" Is there any conceivable reason for the camel to be associated with Perl besides the fact that it first appeared on our book cover?

The fact that the images are public domain (and not all are) is completely irrelevant. The words used in most trademarks are also in the public domain. It's their particular context and field of use that gives them protection. Nike means victory in Greek. But in athletic shoes, it means one particular brand of shoes, because someone made that association, which didn't exist before, through their commercial activity.

For what it's worth, here are some common words that are in fact trademarked for a particular field of use:

Apple - for personal computers
Oracle - for databases
Windows - for operating systems
Red Hat - for versions of Linux
salesforce.com - for CRM systems
for Dummies - books for people who need to understand the basics of a new field (e.g. trademarks :-)

Oh, and by the way, slashdot (/., btw, which is a common "word" in Unix/Linux shell speak) and sourceforge are both trademarks of VA. So if you want to boycott anyone who has trademarks, you should start by boycotting this thread :-) Oh, and you should stop using Linux and Apache and Firefox, because Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, and Apache is a trademark of the Apache Software Foundation, and Firefox is a trademark of the Mozilla Foundation.

I don't think that O'Reilly's use of trademarks is any different than the use by folks like these.

Re:This is news?

[Eivind]

/. is actually *NOT* a common "word" in shell-speak. It makes no sense, since it is simply equivalent to / (which is indeed common)

You must be thinking of ./ which is used for current directory. Particularily for runnign a executable program from the current directory rather than searching for the program on $PATH. As in "Then run ./install.sh to start the installation-script."

/. is a joke of sorts. http-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org is supposed to sound silly or something.

Re:This is news?

[babbling]

Thanks for the response. Another thing people don't seem to realise is that the goal of trademarks is to protect consumers. For example, people might refer to your Perl book as "the camel book" when someone is asking for a good book about Perl. If there was another (but crappy) Perl book with the camel on it, someone might be tricked into buying it instead of the other book they actually wanted.

I blame the use of the term "Intellectual Property" for people thinking of trademarks as bad. People know that copyright laws have become ridiculous, they know that some patents severely impede progress, and since both copyrights and patents are often lumped together with trademarks and described as "intellectual property", people think of trademarks as being bad, too. Trademarks really should be lumped together with other "consumer protection" laws rather than "intellectual property" laws, anyway.

Re:time for a boycott?

[kchrist]

I strongly recommend that you do read up on this before you "decide to act". You should start with the fact that O'Reilly hasn't patented anything. From there, read about the very specific things the trademarks apply to and think about why O'Reilly might want them.

In short, there is nothing abusive going on here.

Re:O'Reilly has a track record of this kind of thi

[tadghin]

Anonymous coward --

This is Tim O'Reilly. You are misinformed. We never filed a lawsuit against Manning. We wrote them a letter asking them not to do books that were obviously trading on the association that we had built between animal book covers and technical topics. They understood the issue and changed their branding. The result: Manning came up with some original brands, that were not confusing, and have helped them to become more successful, with their own identity. Knockoffs are rarely as successful as the original.

Incidentally, Manning is now distributed by O'Reilly. If we had done them wrong, do you think this would be the case?

When will this madness stop!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the subject says it all...

Will this affect blacksmiths?

[FishinDave]

Particulary aggravating is the apparently expanded scope of O'Reilly's claim on "Maker Faire" as opposed to "Web 2.0." The latter mark is registered for use in

"Arranging and conducting live events, namely, trade shows, expositions and business conferences in various fields, namely, computers, communications, and information technology, and Organizing and conducting educational conferences, tutorials and workshops in the fields of computers, communication and information technology."

The "Maker Faire" application is for use in "Arranging of exhibitions, seminars, and conferences; entertainment services, namely, conducting fairs."

If granted, this trademark would seem to cover use of "Maker Faire" in connection with Renaissance Festival-type events, and any other market/industry.

SIGH

[Anonymous Coward]

The core issue aside - this is the usual /. IP blather.

People, go and learn some Trade Mark/Patent Law before endlessly posting inane rubbish about trade marking this and patenting that.

You're looking like idiots.

quick fix

[crea5e]

All we have to do is to just patch it.. web 2.01

Nonsense

[coastwalker]

Just to put the record straight I actually attended Maker Faire (or sunshine festival) two weekends ago here in Plymouth UK. It was an excellent music event with many fine rock bands attended to by three thousand occasionaly sober campers.

I am applying for trademarks for the words "the" "a" and "and" as I am marketing a range of stylish suicide bombs under these tags.

Grrrrrr.

Sad But True Patent and Trademark Tales

[queenb**ch]

First we had the trademarking of the smiley emoticon. That got repealed thanks to a dispute that was file. However, I've noticed that both the patent and trademark office have removed their on-line forms for filing disputes. Frankly, I find that to be quite strange since almost every other government and large corporate entity is moving toward on-line forms. If anyone knows where to find these forms, please post a link, either here or on my blog.

There are a lot of things that were coined "on the 'net" long ago. To my understanding, if it's already in common usage, you are neither allowed to patent or trademark things that are in common usage. If that's the case, I'm filing a trademark on "blog", "on line", "on-line", and "online" as well as every other popular term I can think of. We've been saying "web site" for years now. Who in their right mind thinks that's not in common usage and can be trademarked????

2 cents,

QueenB

Re:Sad But True Patent and Trademark Tales

[chromatic]

To my understanding, if it's already in common usage, you are neither allowed to patent or trademark things that are in common usage.

You're using the greatest research tool in human written history. Why not use it to educate yourself about what patents and trademarks really are?

(Alternately, you could read in a comment attached to this very story Tim O'Reilly's own words about the "Website" trademark.)