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Lawyer Attempts To Trademark Bitcoin
An anonymous reader writes "A NY based lawyer has submitted an application to the US Patent and Trademark Office claiming first use of the term bitcoin on June 22nd, 2011. The evidence of first use in the form of a letter detailing his wife's offer to sell "bitcoin" for $17.50 on June 23rd. A pdf extolling the virtues of bitcoin has also been uploaded to his law firms webpage."
This beautifully illustrates why there should be some punishment for this type of behavior. He's obviously ignoring all prior art and forcing an already overloaded system to deal with this crap. Fine him.
Agile Artisans
my first documented use of the word dollar being today when I said enthusiastically, "oh a dollar sign... how cool would that be if every one paid me a dollar every time they used the word dollar" ;)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
why not?
No bitcoin user is going to cough up the $300 required to counter his claim.
"Bitcoin transactions are virtually anonymous, and untraceable."
4 lines later:
"a public list of all previous transactions is collectively maintained by the members (peers) on the network."
i guess it should be expected from someone trying to do something like this.
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
I just checked, it's actually in the US Patent & Trademark Office's trademark database:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=85353491
By the looks of it, it will be three months before it is assigned to an attourney for review.
I wonder if there is a fine for fraudulently claiming a trademark?
For the following words and characters:
first
post
copyright
patent
plus
+
apple
troll
euro
.
I could apply for some more but I figure these will generate enough money for my needs. I am not greedy and selfish.
- "If one man can create that much hate, you can only imagine how much love we as a togetherness can create."
2. Collect a royalty everytime someone uses them
3. Profit! He'll soon be a Bitcoin [tm] millionaire*
* which will buy him a BigMac [tm] in the real world once that phony currency collapses.
Now, normally, I am not a fan of vigilante justice, I should make that clear.
The problem I see however is that it is clear that our system no longer has justice for the common man. Justice can be bought in America, this is clear. Judges routinely tear up the constitution in order to protect corporate interests.
Lets say that a group of guys beat this guy down. I'm talking hardcore. Would the next guy think twice? What about beating 10 of these trolls down? How many beat downs would it take for the message to get out that the people are not going let you fuck them any more?
Instead of defending the trademark, the lawyer is promoting the virtues of Bitcoin. He is probably just trying to generate publicity to pump up the price of Bitcoins that his wife is selling. I doubt the lawyer is stupid enough to think he can be successful trademark Bitcoin.
Apparently he thinks that all previous uses of the term "bitcoin" to describe the system were made in untraceable cryptographic transactions, so that no evidence can be produced that his use is not the first. If this is the case, he's proven himself to be more than somewhat of an idiot.
It's obviously a publicity stunt, as there is no real money to be gained from this. He has (successfully) made himself famous, now placed on Wikipedia and on news outlets eating up bitcoin news *cough*slashdot*cough*. Fame CAN be bought.
The other thing to consider is whether or not this is a ploy to unmask the original creator of Bitcoin, who disappeared and remains completely anonymous. The lawyer might argue in a court case that only the original creator can defend or fight his claim. In that case... who is this lawyer working for that is trying to unmask the bitcoin creator?
I8-D
All these arguments are great, except that they mean nothing if the mark gets published in the Official Gazette and no one files a notice of opposition within 30 days. Then the mark will be presumed valid and harder to overturn. After a certain point, the mark can no longer be challenged, so it's best to get in opposition as early as possible.
If it gets past the first examiner, it will be published in the Official Gazette in the coming weeks (it's a weekly publication). That's when the notice of opposition should be filed. It costs $300, and requires proof of service to the applicant.
The chief enemy of trademarks isn't "Prior Art" but becoming "Generic".
It doesn't absolutely matter who used what first (unlike prior art & patents).
What matters is :
- In the market where a the trademarked product is sold, does this name clearly identifies the product as a separate marketed entity ?
- Does the company owning the trademark actively work in order to avoid the term becoming generic.
The first is why, sometime, plain normal dictionary words are acceptable as a trademark. Because in that market the word clearly is the specific product. As an example : an apple is a fruit. But Apple, in the IT world, is clearly the maker of Mac and iProducts, that's why its trademarkable. Then, when it moved into the music sector, things started to get problematic, because the Apple name was also widely known for a music publishing company. On the other hand you can't name a media player "Player" and attempt to trademark it this way, because the word "Player" is already used to describe the whole category of this product. It's not specific.
(Also that explains why some words can be trademarked for lots of separate products by separate companies. There is a brand of diapers called "Unix". But the chance of making a confusion between an operating system and an accessory for babies).
In today situation, bitcoins can't be used for a product name, because in the specific domain where lawyer attempts to trademark the word (in the realm of virtual currency) the word "bitcoin" has been already in use to designate a virtual currency. He can't claim the name for his own product. (Or at least not alone. He can still try to market his shop "Mama Jess' all honest Bitcoin trade" - or something along this idea)
The second is why we very often see completely stupid suits happening now or then about trademarks. The owner has to be active preventing the word becoming generic. That's why Google is publishing explanation about how to correctly use this name. Otherwise there's a risk that people will start using as verb, and then use the verb to describe "searching on any search engine".
Now, if the lawyer start pretending that in fact, he's also been working on his very own virtual currency-based product, that he back then decided to call "bitcoin" and is only filing the trademark now :
Well, theorically, he could try filing the trademark so late (as said above, timeline isn't relevant), but the problem is that until now that he's filing it, he hasn't done anything to try to protect the trademark. Even if he genuinely wanted to call his product "bitcoin", it's too late because that word is now widely use to describe the virtual currency we all know about, not specifically the product that this lawyer has been trying to sell.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Are those for boy or girls? Or just universal?
Apparently : they are unisex.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]