Slashdot Mirror
Australian Women Fight Over "Geekgirl" Trademark
bennyboy64 writes "Two prominent women in the Australian IT industry are in a bitter dispute over the ownership of the trademark 'geekgirl.' A woman attempting to use 'geekgirl' on Twitter told ZDNet that women had been advised by the trademark owner to stop doing so since she owned the trademark for the word. 'She noted her trademark and asked me to stop calling myself a "geekgirl" in general conversation and to cease using the hashtag "#geekgirl" on Twitter,' IT consultant Kate Carruthers said."
I'm going to start calling myself slashdot now.
What's the hash tag thing now? I thought that was an IRC channel thing.
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To trademark the term geek. Everyone else has to stop using it. I mean it! STOP IT YOU GUYS!
Maybe they should just go by a more realistic name: UglyGirlsThatWantAttentionFromAnyGuyThatWillGiveItTothem
She could change her name to FuglyGeekGirl.. I'll waive my arbitration fee this time
Who will win?
Under UK law, it would be the one who could prove they used it first.
Under French law, it would be who registered it first.
In Australian law? The one with the biggest tits.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
http://hashtags.org/geekgirl
When chicks fight on the Internet...
Is either one of them hot?
Which one hangs out on Slashdot?
If neither of them do than neither deserves the trademark.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
those who are incapable of thinking of creative and individual names and resort to legal shenanigans
to defend their lack of creativity will be laughed to oblivion
MGT, THE
Usenet Central Administration
1060 W. Addison Chicago, IL 60636
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Why do women, even the most intelligent ones, tend to use the word girl in their names?
Is it for attention? It sounds fucking stupid. Just like when I see boy in a name, I tend to think the person behind it is a dimwitted moron with no imagination.
(Anonymous Coward is so much more impressive.)
Or is it that both are using the mark to sell the same "service"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
geek & girl are common terms, anyone can be a geek and there are lots of girls out there so it is only natural some of those girls are going to be geeks (pencilneck not included)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
While they're busy with that, I'll just claim the "Tubgirl" trademark for myself.
Anyone who claims a trademark on such a generic term should hand in their geek card and instead join the Patent Troll Club. :-(
According to trademark law (at least in the US), if you don't defend your trademark you risk losing it. This unfortunately means people with trademarks wind up setting lawyers on everyone who produces anything vaguely familiar to that trademark, even if they don't particularly want to. Don't know whether it's true in this case, but it would be improper to jump to conclusions.
As far as I know most trademark laws have specific restrictions to prevent abuse as a form of censorship.
Trademarks are meant to be a CONSUMER protection device, not a corporate IP tool.
What's next, Intel forbidding us to use the word Intel to talk about their company ? Of course not. It's only a trademark violation if we try to call another company (in the SAME sphere of business) by that name.
So I don't see how using the word, even IF it's trademarked could be a violation.
With that said, there are other restrictions - you cannot trademark a common word (so no you can't trademark 'beer') and I think geekgirl has been in common usage for a very long time now (though I doubt the average employee of the trademark office would have heard it).
The other restrictions are not really applicable here I think (like you have to defend it or lose it).
Mind you - in most systems at least - you LOSE a trademark if it becomes common usage even AFTER it's registered. This happened in the past to both kleenex and band-aid.
I am quite sure that Cross has no legal leg to stand on and any decent lawyer ought to inform her of this fact, unless the Australian trademark law is by far the most draconian and missapplied such law I have ever heard of.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
or was it geekgrrl?
ah yes:
http://slashdot.org/~geekgrrl
what say you, resident trademark pseudoinfringer?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There's about an 11 or 12 % difference between geekgirl and #geekgirl. What's she got the trademark on?
As a side note, who volunteers to "pound-geekgirl", as "#geekgirl" invites? (better than hashing her...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wrL9z3Kvww
Meow!
LEAVE GEEKGIRL ALONE {Crying Gay-ly} leave geekgirl alone
I wonder if the creator of Geek-Girl comics had a fight with this lady first over the trademark? http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/geekgirlcomic?ref=search&sid=1060724388.1755563054..1
Let the hottest one win
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I write "mine" on my lunch bag etc. I may label tools and other things with "mine." This is only unambiguous if I'm the only person on the planet that does this. Consider yourself notified as of now.
You don't support a broken system by trying to use it yourself. You just ignore it.
If Carruthers believes that geekgirl should be in common usage, then she should just keep on using it, encouraging others to use it, and laugh off Cross and her silly demands until she gets over herself and realises that her opportunity to assert ownership of that trademark was 1995, not 2010.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So they have trademarks on words now, eh? Can't wait to get my trademark on the letter 'a'.
Registered in 95 and only now contesting its use? Sounds like someone didn't defend his trade mark.
NEXT CASE!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Light Vegetable Oil is better, if you want to see the sexy bits. And it increases the chance of losing whatever clothing might still be on. Mud just obfuscates things.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
1999? Holy shit, that was like, before the Internet, man!
I didn't know women existed way back then! Whoa.
A geek girl is one who likes computers, games, similar geeky things. A 1337B337CH is one who uses her h4x0r skills to pwn noobz like these self proclaimed geeks.
Shortly after geek was being used in a non-negative way to refer to computer enthusiasts, geekgirl started being used for clarification purposes due to the extreme gender bias people have of thinking of geeks as an all male group. Heck, I even went to college with a girl that had a binary square tattoo that was ascii for geekgirl.
This entire case reeks of horse manure in my opinion.
Most trademark offices won't let you trademark a name that describes the thing in question. That's why people invent product names like Coca Cola, Pepsi, etc. because you cannot trademark descriptive names like brown fizzy drink, bubbly soda, etc.
... I'm trademarking: and, the, a, of, I, who, what, when, where, and whole list of others ... AND THEN you'll all rue the day!
(seriously - where does this shit end?)
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
At least I know now that the US isn't the only country with a completely incompetent PTO.
Geekgirl has been in continuous use for decades to describe dorky ladies.
http://www.google.com/search?q=geekgirl
About 70,900 results (0.27 seconds)
Yeah- I can see it's been *vigorously* defended by the way all these uses reflect that one person. This is even more annoyingly stupid than Lucasarts owning the term Droid.
Right.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Wow. I've been called, and so have some of my friends, "geekgirl" for years. After years of subtle and not so subtle sexism in the sciences (I'm a scientist and avid computer fan), I'm proud to wear the badge "geekgirl." I've been told such things as "you're going to dumb down this math class because you're a girl and can't do math" to "you're too pretty to be a scientist so probably won't do well (cuz I should be out dating and doing girly things)" to one of my male students stating, "I don't have to call you Dr., you're a woman" to my favorite comment made by a male scientist at a conference "you should submit a picture of yourself with your journal article to assure the article's publication (it was published w/out the picture- jerk). So, some of us wear the badge to show the world that we made it, despite the road blocks set in front of us. And, also, that yes, we can be girly and still be a geek ( I wear dresses, heels, etc. besides the obligatory jeans and geek t-shirts too)!
To all you geekboys/men that support us geekgirls/women, we love you! You rock! To all you geekboys/men that insist on calling us "ugly" or focus on *just* our boobs, STFU dork boy before I kick you in your balls!
If a couple thousand people in Australia started calling themselves "geekgirl", this issue would probably go away. It could even get in the dictionary.
"geekgirl" gets 70,000 hits on Google. The trademark owner must be really really prolific.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This could get interesting!
All I know is legally neither should be able to use the name prettygirl.
I'm positive Jennifer Meyers predates them by a couple of years. She's been using it since (at least) the early 1990's. From the article, their earliest use date is 1995.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferdmyers
-- Terry
n/t.