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Woman Trademarks Name and Threatens Sites Using It
An anonymous reader writes "Be careful mentioning Dr. Ann De Wees Allen. She's made it clear that she's trademarked her name and using it is 'illegal... without prior written permission.' She even lists out the names of offenders and shows you the cease-and-desist letter she sends them. And, especially don't copy any of the text on her website, because she's using a bit of javascript that will warn you 'Copyright Protect!' if you right click on a link."
It's a common misconception that a trademark registration gives you some sort of proprietary right over the mark. People think that it'll allow them to stop anyone from even mentioning the mark.
But the problem for them is that a trademark is not designed to give them property rights, but designed to prevent the public from being mislead about the origins of a product. In order to infringe a trademark, the public must have a likelihood of confusion as to which product they're buying or using. So, if a company infringes claims to be Dr. Ann De Wees Allen's company and starts selling a competing product, then she'd have a case against them. She has absolutely no case against someone just mentioning her name off-hand. My post mentioning "Dr. Ann De Wees Allen" does not create any confusion in the person reading my post that somehow my post is actually from "Dr. Ann De Wees Allen". She's got a worthless trademark.
The funny thing is that she's actually got a fairly well known IP firm to prosecute the trademark, so she must've spent at least several thousand dollars in getting this worthless trademark registration. I wonder if the firm warned her that the mark is useless and she persisted anyway, or if the firm omitted the worthless nature of the mark to her.
On a sidenote, for hilarity's sake, let's refer to her as "She Who Cannot Be Named."
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
we can't just type "Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a hoot", we have to type "Dr. Ann De Wees Allen(TM) is a hoot" ?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
My friend Sony Peterson told me this kind of thing is starting to gain traction.
She has two patents that appear to show both what is wrong with America's diet mentality and the patent system all at once.
She's basically pimping out arginine as a panacea (from increased sexual performance to weight-loss). Just read about her wondrous achievements on Skinny Science Corporation: A Leading Biomedical Research Company. Never have I seen the word "science" so abused and raped by words around it. And it doesn't stop there. Google her name or "skinny science" and you're left with a plethora of bullshit sites with her vapid stare hawking complete medical farces designed to prey on the obese. Surprise surprise, she wants it to be illegal for you to talk about her and these sites.
Does anybody know how she got the prefix of "Dr."?
My work here is dung.
I just typed ctrl-a, ctrl-c, and, poof!, all of the text of the page was in my clipboard. :-)
Hence, even recommending the doctor by name in an email could be considered infringing.
So I won't recommend her to any other potential clients.
But, as others note, I can put her name down and put the (TM) trademark symbol up and that is OK, just like when I refer to Sony or 3M.
Ill thought out in my estimation, though I understand what she is trying to do.
All kinds of people have tried this in the past, almost always in order to control negative information from being published about them. However, the courts have ALWAYS ruled that a person's name is fair use. She (just like the thousands before her), won't get anywhere with this. Even if a proper name was not fair use, having a trademark does not prevent people from talking about the trademark. At the most, it would prevent someone form using her trademark to infringe on her IP (e.g. counterfeiting). Basically, she's an idiot.
Mother names new born daughter "Ann de Wees Allen". Is this trademark infringement? By mother? Child? Or does it require a "Dr."? If so, who infringes, the PhD student? Or the university?
I think it is bad, as a matter of public policy, to allow trademarks on names. Otherwise I could be sued, since my name is Bob Weir.
I'd noticed that Chris Messina, the Open ID advocate and recent or current Google employee, had also trademarked his name recently. He displays it that way on internet profile pages. So far it has mostly been an inconvenience to me, in using the correct mark-up to designate TM whenever I quote him for some OAuth or OpenID article. I'd wondered why he possibly would want to trademark his name. He runs it all together as "chrismessina" or the character decimal code: chrismessina™ if I remembered the mark-up, of course!
tempus fugit
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And, especially don't copy any of the text on her website, because she's using a bit of javascript that will warn you 'Copyright Protect!' if you right click on a link."
mmm nope, it doesn't... OH you mean I have to disable my NoScript protection...
*enables javascript in the infomercial page*
Aaaah, now I see... that kind of reminds me of Snopes... back before I discovered Firefox ;)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I don't want to protect my name. She'll be screaming it later.
...the meaning of the phrase "Streisand effect" :)
Isn't that slander (or libel -- I never could keep the two straight)?
Of course truth is a viable defense (in the US), so maybe you are OK.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Funny how (even if you have javacript turned on, which i usually dont have) easily you can get around seeing these funny messages generated by an incompetent web designer and still copy the text.
Did i now violate laws? will somebody sue me because i help people to circumvent anything?
Moreover if not all appearances of a trademark carry a (tm) symbol and it is not mentioned that all appearances of the name relate to the trademark (i dont believe you would find this sentence in every manual if it would not be needed), does this affect the validity of using the term as a trademark?
Another interesting question is if is a legal difference if i make a insulting remark in relation a trademark or a name.
http://www.quackometer.net/
gives it a zero cannard rating. This means her site is not quack.
I've already complained to the quackometer.net admin about this.
-paul
her bogus trademark attempt is getting her more attention than anything she's done previously... had any of us heard of her before this 'news' item? not a bad return on an investment of a few thousand dollars. thanks, dr. ann van what's her name
She could at least have gone for the name Jehovah.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Aside from the confusion of Trademark / Copyright, I find some of her meta-tags interesting:
'Edible Computer Chips', 'Quantum Chocolate'
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
On the patent for her name. "Current Status: Section 8 and 15 affidavits have been accepted and acknowledged" At least the Section 8 is accurate. Hehe
Dr. Pepper did the same thing in the 19th century.
.sig withheld by request
Taken from www.anndeweesallen.com :
"Known in the industry as the “Alpha Scientist,” Dr. Allen is in the forefront of scientific breakthroughs, including Nanotechnology, NanoMolecules, Quantum Chocolate, Genetic polymorphisms in Dysregulated Arginine Metabolism, Sickle Cell Polymorphisms, Thalassemia, Blind Amino Acid Riders, L-Arginine Isoform Pathways, and Edible Computer Chips."
Feel free to sue me, bitch, as I have no money nor do I have any property of value. Slashdot is covered under Safe Harbor laws.
And then hiring a lawyer and letting the money roll on in.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
She says that using her name would be "illegal". That implies criminal. Isn't trademark infringement a civil matter?
This is the last sentence in the C&D letter she sends:
Your anticipated cooperation is anticipated.
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
Has anyone else noticed that at the end of the meta keywords for her page is "Edible Computer Chips"?
But she does, presumably, have a cunt.
So, if she claimed libel, wouldn't that mean that she's admitting to being MTF transgender?
FC Closer
This would basically be a written and broadcast media, so it's libel. Slander is for spoken word.
I say let her send her cease-and-desist letters. It will only make for less networking on her part, and less business for her as a direct result. She's digging her own grave. The fair use clause in US copywrite law would prevent her from winning most (if not all) lawsuits she files. You can talk about a trademark as long as you don't infringe upon it.
They tell us the most common first name in the world is "Muhammad".....
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Would it be libel to say "Dr. Ann De Wees Allen has been raping and killing children for the last 20 years"?
I thought you could not use any federal logos or seals on your website or publication unless you had permission from the government. She has the US Patent and Trademark office logo all over her site. I don't see where she has permission.
I'm going to register that and typo squat to the site of my choosing.
is a != has a.
In the first case you use a inheritance, in the second composition.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Then, every anonymous lawsuit will infringe on your trademark. That way, you can sue lawyers, who are typically rolling in dough!
Isn't that slander (or libel -- I never could keep the two straight)?
I don't believe so. I think in order for it to rise to the level of libel, it needs to be a claim that could harm their reputation, that would be believed by a reasonable person. So simply calling her a name is not the same as saying she makes her products with slave labor or some other such claim.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Billy Joel has, since a very early time in his career, a registered trademark on his name for the purpose of music. I'm pretty sure he's not going around suing parents who have the audacity to name their kids William Joel, however.
Look at the album cover of "Billy Joel (R) Greatest Hits" for an example.
I think he meant to say "IN MY OPINION"
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
Dr. Ann De Wees Allen is a CUNT!!
There, completely safe from both Libel and Slander in all sensible jurisdictions.
The parent post raises a good point but identifies the wrong problem.
Fair use is a defense to infringement, and the only uses I see on agesolutions.com appear to be truthful and factual, relating to Dr. Named's US Patent No. 6608109 expiring no later than 11/20/2011. Indeed, rather than considering this "an entirely valid use of trademark law," I'd see it as an egregious example of bad-faith, improper use of trademark law. Dr. Named's company doesn't appear to market the product with the mark as a brand as such- they seem to use ARGMATRIX- so there's little doubt they registered their mark to bully competitors.
The problem for agesolutions.com is that they infringe an entirely different mark: L-ARGININE M2. At least according to Dr. Named, "M2" has no significance in the industry or with respect to the product, and as such, it's protectable.
Webwasher flags it as something I should not be looking at.
I wonder what Dr. Allen is up to...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Hmm, that is better than bill smith, then no one will even be able to draw a picture of me either.... WIN-WIN.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
She's not the first person to do this. OJ Simpson trademarked his name in 1995 after the murder trial
Dr. Allen's Inspiring Survival Story "The definition of failure is not falling down but staying down." Dr. Ann de Wees Allen's Story of Survival Washington, D.C. One morning, in 1983, I woke up unable to swallow. By the end of the day I could not even swallow water. My fiancée Jeff and my mother had to jointly "drag" me to the hospital emergency room because I kept saying nothing was wrong. Jeff replied, "Then why can't you swallow?" And I said, "Oh, for heavens sake, something small is stuck in my esophagus and I'm sure it will pop out." It didn't pop out. They admitted me to the emergency room of the local hospital, and by the next day they had scheduled surgery. I awoke in Intensive Care to a nightmare. I was lying on a table and nine hours had lapsed. Nine hours? Nine hours for just a little something stuck in my throat? What went wrong? I felt cold and then the pain began to wash over me. I looked down at my body and saw huge metal staples covering my torso. The staples appeared to be holding me together. Inch-wide incisions ran the entire circumference of my body - somewhat like a peach that had been sliced in half and opened up. Another incision ran from my sternum to my naval. An incision ran down the side of my nose and a tube had been inserted and sewed to the skin. Two large tubes ran into my side and they also were attached to the skin. I was too frightened to speak. The surgeon appeared and said, "I'm sorry." I said, "About what?" He replied, "About the cancer." "What cancer?" "You have stomach and esophageal cancer and we have removed your distal esophagus, stomach, rib cage, and diaphragm portions." I couldn't think of a thing to say. My brother Philip came in and calmly took my hand. I hadn't seen my brother cry since we were children. That's when I "borrowed" his Zorro cape to use as a tablecloth for my doll and in the process ruined it. I was diagnosed with stomach and esophageal cancer. I was the youngest person ever diagnosed with this type of cancer. The survival rate was less than 2%. How could I be dying of cancer? I was young, healthy, and very athletic. I had never smoked a cigarette, didn't drink anything other than an occasional glass of wine, jogged every day, and perhaps more importantly, had no history of cancer in my family. In college, years earlier, I received a scholarship in Environmental Chemistry and Engineering from the Environmental Protection Agency. This scholarship included working on EPA contracts in an environmental research laboratory. The longest research project I worked on was a toxic guidelines study of polychlorinated byphenols (PCBs). Every day for two years, I condensed samples to extract PCBs from them. Following the two-year study, the EPA banned PCBs from the market labeling them as carcinogens. I had breathed PCBs every day for two years. The pain was relentless and agonizing. I didn't know that a human could survive such pain. It took every ounce of strength left in my body to get through the day. I was receiving morphine shots in my legs every two hours, twenty-four hours a day. I was still begging for more. This went on for thirty-two days. I could not even have a sip of water during this time. My mouth and lips craved the sensation of liquid. Hunger, pain, and thirst were my constant companions. It was difficult to think of anything else. After over a month of this torment, the doctors came into my room to announce it was time to test the new system they had constructed inside me. They took me downstairs to "test the new system." I felt horrible and dehumanized. I looked like a Frankenstein monster. Visitors in the hospital elevator and hall were staring at me. They had given me an extra morphine shot so they could hang me upside down like a bat and take pictures of the "new setup." My "new setup" was designed to replace my regular organs. I made the mistake of asking the technician what would happen if this "new setup" didn't work as planned. He said, "Well, you will die." I was impressed with his subtlety. The surgeon appeared all aglow a
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
No, of course I didn't read that self aggrandizing wall of text. I read just enough to realize the broad is probably bat-shit crazy. Oh - wait. That was the point of TFA, right?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's an opinion - absolutely no factual content whatsoever - so it doesn't count as either slander or libel in most countries, as I understand it.
Well, there is no "proof" that she uses slave labor and child labor to produce her products. But, the investigators haven't complete their investigation yet, either.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
At my website, 127.0.0.1:80, also doing business as Localhost Industries, we sell an extensive line of famous Ann Dewees Allen products - we've got sugar replacements, L-Arginine used for sexual potency, Nitric Oxide products used for entertainment and research only, and our famous Anne deWees Allen Nigerian Herbal Formula.
Remember, if you can't get it at Localhost, it's Just No Fun!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You just lost it.
Announcing to the world that you do not want your name published anywhere is exactly like playing The Game. You make everyone lose just by mentioning it!
Oh, and you just lost that, too.
Almost forgot: she's also a Nutritional Meal Replacement Powder
Sorry... I already trademarked that one in tribute to my ex-wife.
You should see all the things sold by my localhost server. Ads from dozens of different ad networks get served from there while using my home network.
Wait, your ad blocking localhost violates my trrademark on localhost! How dare you usurp the time-honored name! My lawyers will be contacting you shortly (and laughing, no doubt).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Note: as a commercial printer, please take the advice from above.
Though the worse is PDFs saved out of photoshop, so Adobe alone is not enough.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Oh look! View page source, Ctrl+U.
Use Adobe(R) PDF. If you and your friends don't, how will all those updater-updating-installer developers find work??
She thinks Coffee (by itself, pure coffee) makes you fat.
She did an interview to fox news (big surprise) here: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/health/111709-Does-coffee-make-you-fat
Conveniently she has a patent on something that she claims prevents coffee from making you fat so you can continue drinking it.
It just gets better! From "medkb.com"
"Shalom, they call me the Alpha Scientist. I own a nutraceuticals company; I own a Human testing facility in the University of Florida and have hundreds of researchers working under me. I have spent 24 years of my life in medicine quantifying scientific and medical breakthroughs. As you have heard I received the first glycemic patent worldwide and I received the first patent on L- Arginine in the production of the anti-aging hormones for growth hormone and testosterone, which are the main mechanism of aging.
I am a multi-millionaire many times over for my patents. One of my patents was named breakthrough product of the year by success magazine and I beat Bill Gates out that year for the award. It is always nice to beat Bill Gates at anything I think the message I want to deliver is: I am head of the Agel medical advisory board, the Scientific advisory board so anything that goes in your mouth is my responsibility. I take that real seriously. So in order for you to trust the products, you need to trust me. And in order to trust me you need to know who I am and what I stand for. That is the most important thing..."
It goes on for quite a while beyond that, and gets progressively funnier. LINK
I should take a mirror of her entire site, put it in a zip file, make a torrent of it, put it on TPB, and then notify her about it using a dummy email address, causing the lolcow to get more pissed off, then she'd send a C&D or DMCA takedown to TPB, causing more Streisand effect and more lulz, then someone would submit a story to Idle about the lulz that ensue, causing more Streisand effect and more lulz, then everyone would put tinyurl links to the torrent in their sigs, causing the lolcow to get more pissed off, then she'd send a C&D/DMCA takedown to Slashdot, which would be reported in another article, which would create more lulz and more Streisand effect, then 4chan would pick it up and start harassing the lolcow, causing her to get more pissed off, then she'd send a C&D/DMCA takedown to 4chan, causing more Streisand effect and more lulz, then comedy sites would pick it up, causing the lolcow to get more pissed off...
I've either invented a perpetual motion lulz engine or a fusion lulz bomb. Either way, there are good times to be had!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Ivana Trump regards her name as a trademark, too.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
You know, McDonald's has their name trademarked. However, the companies that put out phone books don't have to get prior written permission to list them in the phone book. I don't need prior written permission to mention on a blog that I bought a Big Mac and it was cold (thought they'd probably throw a slander charge at me). Mentioning a trademarked name isn't against the law.
Dr. Ann de Wees Allen anticipatively anticipates the anticipation of the anticipatable anticipators!
Funny aside: Dr. Ann de Wees Allen sounds to me like one of those dumb ass "researchers" who became head of a lab not because they know shit, but because they knew the right people. I bet the only thing she's good at is taking credit for other people's work. Way to go Dr. Ann de Wees Allen... you win the prestigious fucktard award for September 20th, 2010. Congratulations!
"To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction"
This is clearly in reaction to The Pirate Bay's page on threatening letters they've received.
If this catches on - Facebook is screwed.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Anybody find her contact page ironic? http://www.anndeweesallen.com/Contact.htm She claims she receives 100K email a month, so don't email her about personal question. That is like 3,300 email a day, many well known celebrities would not receive that many emails in a day. Btw, her Wot rating is very poor: http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/anndeweesallen.com
I mailed this to them after gleaning over this thread quickly. I know it wasn't really that well put together but I spent like 1 minute on it. It's funny nonetheless:
Subject: Do you realize that your lawyers has screwed you ?
Trademarks doesn't work the way you think. Go to the quackery exposure site and check your self:
http://www.quackometer.net/?suspectquack=Dr+Ann+de+Wees+Allen
Stop encumbering the patent office with useless quackery. It's supposed to handle real patents.
Your lawyers should have warned you that your trademark in not enforceable the way you think it can. The only thing it protects you from is trying to sell a similar service with your name as the seller. And even then it's going to be hard. Hahahaha.
Response:
Subject: Re: Do you realize that your lawyers has screwed you ?
WRONG.
WE HAVE FILED 32 MILLION DOLLARS OF LAWSUITS - AND NOT LOST ONE !!!
Epic. So they managed to sue other people than those trying to leech off her name or what ?
Can I light a sig ?
Wow. This might be the most literal example of the nominative use defense in trademark infringement claims.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
She's made it clear that she's trademarked her name and using it is 'illegal... without prior written permission.'
Last week, like just about everyone else, I was playing through the Halo: Reach campaign. Somehow, I got thinking of a very curious fact: the game is set in 26th century, and it totally appears as if the Red Cross had ceased to exist at that point of history. Really. You see medical supplies marked with red "H" or Staff of Aesculapius. But not red cross.
Of course, the real reason why this happens is that Red Cross objects to the use of red crosses on video game health-kits and like. But the thought that the Red Cross had completely disappeared obviously came to my mind - there's no mention of the organisation anywhere, and all of the symbols are conspicuously missing. You go around a city, looking to stop invaders in a bloody hospital and you're glad your navigation AI tells where you should go, because it's kind of harder to identify the building from a helicopter...
I guess the moral of the parable is that if you don't want your name to remain, the chances are that it won't.
Dr. Ann de Wees Allen is an idiot and doesn't realize that I can say Dr. Ann de Wees Allen without Dr. Ann de Wees Allen having anything to say about it. The only way that Dr. Ann de Wees Allen can complain is if I were to mislead people using the name Dr. Ann de Wees Allen or to claim that Dr. Ann de Wees Allen supports a product or to claim Dr. Ann de Wees Allen as a product name. Dr. Ann de Wees Allen really wouldn't have any recourse if Dr. Ann de Wees Allen was mentioned in any context outside of a Dr. Ann de Wees Allen website or a Dr. Ann de Wees Allen product line.
But I would never use Dr. Ann de Wees Allen's name without her permission so Dr. Ann de Wees Allen can feel safe.