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Rupert Murdoch Claims To Own the 'Sky' In 'Skype'
Crudely_Indecent writes "Not content to own just news stories, Rupert Murdoch is now going after individual words! His BSkyB is fighting a legal battle with Skype, claiming that it owns the 'Sky' in 'Skype.' From the article: 'A spokesman for Sky confirmed that the company has been involved in a "five-year dispute with Skype" over trademark applications filed by the telecomms company. These are, the spokesman added: "including, but not limited to, television-related goods and services."'"
Seems they own the word Douche in the word Douchebag too.
I thought trademarks were related to the possibility of accidental confusion. If Murdoch thinks the average person will confuse BSkyB and Skype, he must have the most horrendous opinion of the average person!
Whens he gonna die?
take my land
take me where I cannot stand
I don't care
I'm still free
you can't take the sky from me
(Sorry, it's the first thing that came to mind.....)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...to hunt down the doctor who dropped him on his head when he was born? You know, to get the doctor to put him back where he took him out from?
He employs Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, the entire Fox and Friends team; and blames the internet for the fail of Newscorp. Obviously he's an moron.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Isn't it interesting how the scope of Trademarks and IP law keep expanding. The original concept of a trademark was to make it difficult for the competition to pass their products off as your products, it had this concept of a "reasonable person" being confused between mark A and mark B. I think when we have companies protecting dictionary words and words containing other words that they happen to have trademarked it has gone far further than the original concept.
I wonder how long until someone protects the letter 'a' and then requires a cash payment each time you use that letter in your trademark? I know that sounds like an insane concept but if you asked people about what is happening today with IP and trademarks they would have told you that was insane too!
Whenever someone invented the trademark to protect the rights of the inventor - did they ever think it was going to end up with cases like this?
When is he going to sue Skynet?
Why isn't there a big uproar about all these ridiculous patent/trademark/copyright lawsuits in any form of mainstream media? If my congressmen for the next election ran on the platform of severely limiting software patents I know I would vote for him even if he also ran for eating babies!
Yes but he also owns the merde in Murdoch.
-- open source? sounds like the real book --
What a joke! That's about as silly as Apple claiming that it owns the 'i' prefix for electronics. That battle was already settled. At least in the U.S., anyway.
The scope of government itself keeps expanding. Every year there are more laws, more crimes, more spending, and more power concentrated at the top. Since the scope of IP is directly related to and derived from the scope of government, it's no surprise that as long as government keeps getting bigger, so will the scope of their laws.
This story increases my suspicion that Murdoch has a William Randolph Hearst fixation.
I Trademark letter E on the internet $0.01 per use.
You bill about $0.50 and site about the same for it's text.
What next? Saying he owns the fox in firefox?
Does he also own a 4 letter word embedded in the English town of Scunthorpe?
take that self aggrandizing pompous ass down a notch or two.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
...if Roopfert has a trademark on eating a bowl of dicks yet? Because I seriously plan on suggesting that he do exactly that.
How does this bozo think owning "British Sky Broadcasting" gives him a trademark for sky? If he gets away with this he will next go after British Airways and British Petroleum, followed by British Broadcasting Corporation and American Broadcasting Corporation.
Sure, Murdoch owns the "sky" in Skype, but you're not reporting on the fact that Stelios Haji-Ioannou and his "we sue over any use of the word 'easy'" wanna-be Virgin operation have laid claim to the "e" in Skype. That just leaves the "p", which, obviously, already belongs to Sean "P Diddy" Combs. But not to worry, the former Skype will be able to Trademark the null set, which is an extraordinarily powerful identity...
Sorry, Rupert! The good folks at SK Hand tools http://www.skhandtool.com/ have had a trademark in SK since 1921. I think you owe them 2/5 of all the revenues BSkyB have taken in since 1989.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
You bill about $0.50 and site about the same for it's text.
Well I'm trademarking superfluous apostrophes and you owe me big time!
So if Murdoch wins this, will he set a precedent that allows KY Jelly to sue him for the KY in SKY?
After all, it might create confusion in the market, seeing as how they are both in the business of fucking you in the arse.
His previous victory in proving ownership of the Try in Tripe (with the caveat that only when the word is spoken) has seemingly encouraged this attempt.
BSkyB is the British Sky Broadcasting, formerly known as the Sky Channel, with the "Sky" part trademarked in television. I'd say he has a point, but noone says "Sky" anymore, especially after they started calling it BSkyB themselves. I dunno, do trademarks change or become invalid after rebrandings?
Sky & Telescope Magazine owned the word Sky in 1941, after assimilating two magazines, The Sky, published by the the Hayden Planetarium and The Telescope, published by Harvard University. Read about it here.
Seems to me if anyone has a claim on the word, they would be near the head of the line.
I hope Sky win, and then the Ilse of Skye can then sue Sky for all its worth (after all, the Isle of Skye was around first!)
Thats the only reason I got sky, i though I would get a share in the island!
Sue James Cameron about SKYnet. He's gonna show you that there where no special effects in Terminator...
(Capcha: Revolt?? In a posting about terminators??)
very good. for non-speakers of French, merde means crap.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Has been Murdock's since the dawn of time.
A man who will be mourned by no one.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
you can take the sky from me.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
I will create a company called "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyz0123456789", and will by default own copyrights to ALL english-based written communications!
If "anyone" should be sued here it's Murdoch.... who is pretending that he has some sort of "claim" to the word sky.
One should sue Murdoch on behalf of all descendants of the Norse people... it would make quite a class action lawsuit !!
Get me a dictionary and a cheap lawyer, so I can register all natural language words as brands, including their use as a prefix for another word. Can be costly, but I think I win in the end.
A powerful, mean and hateful man - who's wealth and power have brought no comfort to his cramped and ugly little self. The paucity of his humanity is demonstrated with every pathetic grab he makes.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I own the "ass" in Fox Classics. So there.
Interesting that TFA only mentions Rupert Murdoch's name once and that has him as the owner of BSkyB, yet the headline on the original article (mirrored by ./) implies that he is suing Skype when it's actually some relatively unknown subsidiary.
Well I suppose it attracts more readers than if the headline had said "BSkyB claims to own the 'Sky' in Skype".
where is the $0.07 for the e USE?
I can avoid using that symbol without any difficulty. A full book "la disparition" is without an apparition of that symbol.
Can someone please get a grip of this man and remind him he is just a media mogul from Down Under, and isn't that dang important, or newsworthy. Somehow it smacks of self-perpetuating motion for a media baron to attract so much media attention.
You think that is bad, wait till they have to pay another 2/5 for BS.
This sentence no verb.
In Soviet Russia....words own you!
I thought that was Tomorrow Never Dies? The World Is Not Enough could be semi-linked to the BP spill in the gulf though. All we need to do is call Pierce Brosnan and get a hot Asian chick to take out Murdoch on his stealth boat before he tricks the Chinese and the Brits to attack each other!
You think that is bad, wait till they have to pay another 2/5 for BS.
Subscribers have been paying for that for over two decades now.
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
try calling something leopard or snow leopard or tiger.
though they got to use Apple even though the Beatles had it first
Seems like they have been around a lot longer time than Skype, and maybe BSkyB (never heard of it before this article unlike Skype and Skytel). They have certainly been involved in communiciations a long time. I had a pager from them almost 20 years ago. And a quick Google search on business names with "sky" in them returns 63,000,000 results ...
RO
I think their point is to tie up resources, time and money by finding every way to make lawsuits.
Gosh, I wonder why Fox News owned by Ruport Murdoch isn't tearing Mr Ruport Murdoch a new one over this.
And if you wonder why the BBC isn't reporting? Same deal. Us knows us.
Don't expect unbiased reporting on the news, by the news.
Depening on the mainstream news for news about mainstream news companies is like allowing politicians to vote on their own salaries. Board members to vote on board of director salaries. VVD members (dutch right wing party) to examine VVD members who mismanged a bank and werent overseen by the regulator who is a member of the VVD.
Politics, maybe if we shot everyone who watches Idols, we would have a bit more scrutiny.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...and here i am about to register SkyBSky.com and Murlock.com... spose he will claim to own the "Mur" term too. bastard..
Some muscle-bound guy in tights with a big 'S' on his chest has first dibs.
My 2 Yen.
Murdoch is a complete whack job and a fruitcake.
Unfortunately he also has power and influence, without which he would be ignored like the rest of the nut jobs.
I would use the candid camera defense. The idea is, this lawsuit is so ridiculous we must be on candid camera. Everyone involved would break out laughing saying "Oh, I get it!" and "OK, where are the cameras?" Then everyone on our side would proceed to believe it was a joke and not take anything Rupert's lawyers say seriously, etc.
Then again, there's probably a good reason I'm not a lawyer.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
When is he going to sue Skynet?
Possibly after the sale of Skynet closes. (The Terminator was a Hemdale film distributed by Orion Pictures, which got bought by MGM Studios. As of a few days ago, Spyglass and Lionsgate are bidding on MGM. I'm rooting for Lionsgate, if only because of MGM's mascot.)
If he owns "Sky", then what's the correct product name pronounced ?
Sky-"Pee" ?
-- You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do
For that matter, Johnson & Johnson have owned the Ky trademark for their Ky-lube product since 1904. Though I think Rupert needs it more for the stick up his ass.
I find it ironic that western industry is wasting resources over such useless crap, while China and India investing heavily in technology, manufacturing, and environmental science.
You are an hero!
Also: SKYnet.
This seems like sensationalists journalism by /. because at no point does it say Rupert Murdoch is involved in this more so than the janitor of the company. I love /. (thanks for the free $40K from the va linux ipo) but appreciate facts over someones opinion. If anything, BSkyB should be kicking itself for picking such a ridiculous name. Seems like the dispute is over the ticker symbol here by a company that Rupert owns...is that really newsworthy front page material?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
in asshole
Is Rupert going to sue for the word arse - in arsehole?
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
Hahaha. I didn't use this lttr at all in this commnt. Now what ar you gonna do about it? ;-)
Fun fact: there actually was a French novel written without the use of "E". What's even more weird, it was translated into English without using "E" as well.
...but that works too.
It's not as if there aren't millions more just as insane, evil, and stupid as he is.