Atari Targets Retro Community With Cease & Desist

svenski writes "Atari User reports that Atari Inc. have begun to target the retro community and have now turned their attentions to atari2600.org, a website first registered in 2000, demanding the domain name be handed over."

Comments

Trademark Dilution

[Anonymous Coward]

Eleven years of no enforcement means they effectively gave up all rights to the name. See you in court, Atari.

Is this what it has come down to?

[Reverand Dave]

There seems to be news like this in abundance. When corporate profits start to sag, or don't skyrocket the legal teams start looking for people to mess with to rack up billable hours. It's disgusting to say the least how willing these companies are to alienate fans in pursuit of profits.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[SomePgmr]

I'm not sure abusively litigious behavior is tied to failure. Apple, for example.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[tlhIngan]

I'm not sure abusively litigious behavior is tied to failure. Apple, for example.

Funny thing is, Apple is doing it wrong, literally. No patent troll sues to keep a product off the market - you have to wait until the product is wildly successful, perhaps close to the end of the patent term, THEN you sue for massive damages. Plus, Apple is filing everywhere but East Texas, sheesh. Everyone knows you use East Texas to make life easy.

Suing to keep a product off the market means you give up whatever profits you could've made had that product been successful.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[hedwards]

Patent trolls don't generally have a competing product. The amount of money that Apple stands to gain by having a competitor locked out of the market is likely to be a lot more than what they can reasonably collect if they win a later patent case.

But more importantly, it keeps competitors out of the minds of possible consumers.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[SomePgmr]

I guess it's fair to say there's more than one reason companies will abuse the legal system. Patent trolling is just one. Apple appears to be hyper-protective of their business at the expense of even their biggest fans. And as you pointed out, less interested in looking for compensatory damages to make up for any kind of lost revenue than just keeping everything secret and dissimilar from their own products.

I'd argue that trolling as a business model is nastier, in that it usually manifests as a fishing with dynamite approach. But I could certainly be wrong.

Re:Why?

[spazdor]

Because some quasi-develepor exec probably sold them on the idea that their decades-old intellectual property could become sellable again on the mobile/embedded platform market but first they need to kill off the community that formed around these games?

Re:Shoot in the foot

[swanzilla]

Remove of the toe?

"Estoppel Defense"

[lkcl]

i've just written this to the blog-writer: Please use the "Estoppel" Legal Defense. There's no way that Atari have not known of the existence for 12 years of the atari2600.org domain name.

The "Estoppel" defense states that if you ignore something, it is tantamount to "acquiescence" - i.e. "silent consent".

thus it can be claimed that Atari has "Silently Consented" to the use of this domain name, by virtue of them not having done anything for well over a decade.

Re:Assign Rights to Nolan Bushnell

[Haedrian]

Atarisucks.com is already taken :(

It redirects to their website.

Re:But...

[Asmor]

It's a french company formerly known as Infogrames. They purchased Atari, sat on it for a while, realized "Nobody's ever heard of Infogrames," and changed their name.

That was, I believe, in the early 2000's. I worked for Atari briefly in 2003 and got the impression that the name change was fairly recent.

Is this a real site?

[ZombieBraintrust]

I navigated to atari2600.org It doesn't look like the author is really using the domain. It is nothing but a title and a few links to another domain www.taswegian.com No blog, no community, no content. Just let them have it.

He's right. It's called "Estoppel"

[MichaelCrawford]

Trademarks are special in that you lose them if you don't enforce them. That's not the case with copyrights, patents or trade secrets. If you don't defend your trademark, then the law holds that your mark becomes part of the language, so that you don't own it anymore.

I learned of this when Saks 41st Avenue sent a C&D letter to a small clothing store called Sacks 41st Avenue in Capitola, California. It made the front page of the local paper. Saks' attorney told the reporter who asked about it that they had to defend their trademark or they would lose it.

The problem though is that whoever administers the domain name dispute resolution policy may not apply the trademark law. It is possible that Atari could take the domain because they registered their trademark before the website registered their domain. Because their trademark is no longer enforceable, they have no rights to the domain, but ICANN may not heed that fact and so force the register to hand the domain over to Atari.

It's even worse than you think!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're also sending letters to any hobbyist showing an Atari logo... even in a demo scene production.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/186151-ive-got-email-from-atari-today/

Obviously a sign they're bringing back the Jaguar

[elrous0]

Nintendo, Sony, MS--they've all had their heydeys. But the next generation will be ruled by the Atari Jaguar Series 2. They're going to launch with new versions of "Adventure" and "Combat" that will make everyone who even sees the trailers orgasm uncontrollably. You heard it here first.

Re:Why?

[Captain Splendid]

You know what's even better? Playing Pong with then fucking that chick I pulled at the bar.

Then, if she likes zombie movies, some co-op L4D2.

You got limited vision, my man.

Re:Why?

[Hatta]

That's the crazy thing. Infogrames took the Atari name, presumably to capitalize on people's good memories. Now they are attacking the very people trying the hardest to keep those memories alive. This makes no business sense whatsoever.

Re:Why?

[randizzle3000]

Palmela Handerson is her name.

Re:He's right. It's called "Estoppel"

[X0563511]

Whole lotta content there....

That's Just Right.

[Half-pint HAL]

You're missing the point -- Apple wants to sell the thing that always works. Keeping things pinned down minimises crashes. Minimising crashes means higher user satisfaction, which builds the brand.

User freedom is also known as "enough rope to hang yourself".

Apple have been very clever and relied on the "appstore goldrush" to ensure that millions of different app developers can produce enough to satisfy the hundreds of significant use-cases of the phone. The ecosystem is saturated, so the loss of a few is no problem at all.