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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."
Eleven years of no enforcement means they effectively gave up all rights to the name. See you in court, Atari.
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?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I'm not sure abusively litigious behavior is tied to failure. Apple, for example.
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.
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.
Atarisucks.com is already taken :(
It redirects to their website.
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.
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.
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/
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.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Palmela Handerson is her name.
Whole lotta content there....
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...