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IMAX Tries To Censor Ars Technica Over SteamVR Comparison
Cutting_Crew writes: An article published last week at Ars Technica looked at the SteamVR virtual reality headset created by Valve. Contained in the article is a quote from game designer Alex Schwartz, who said in reference to the device, "The jump between a regular game and playing a room scale VR experience is X times 100. It’s like saying, 'I have an IMAX theater in my house.' It’s so much better that we can get away with a cumbersome setup." Now, for that single quoted reference, IMAX has sent a trademark complaint to Ars and demanded that they take the story down. "The company said our story required a retraction because it included a brief reference to IMAX—included without IMAX's permission. 'Any unauthorized use of our trademark is expressly forbidden.'"
If you look at the letter from IMAX (PDF), you'll see they think the reference to IMAX is "misleading to readers." They further request that "all future articles regarding this "room-scale" virtual reality system make no reference to our registered trademark." Apparently, IMAX has never heard of the Streisand Effect. Update: 06/19 19:26 GMT by S : IMAX has apologized.
If you look at the letter from IMAX (PDF), you'll see they think the reference to IMAX is "misleading to readers." They further request that "all future articles regarding this "room-scale" virtual reality system make no reference to our registered trademark." Apparently, IMAX has never heard of the Streisand Effect. Update: 06/19 19:26 GMT by S : IMAX has apologized.
They have to police the trademark to keep it from becoming a generic and they don't want IMAX to become synonymous with giant-ass screen. Just google what happened to Xerox, keep some kleenexes handy.
Yeah, those bastards and their journalism.
Apparently the submitter has never heard of the Streisand Effect. either. The Streisand Effect. is where one does not want publicity, but their efforts to suppress it increase the publicity. IMAX is not trying to hide from any publicity, they just don't want their name used in conjunction with some else's product. And preventing confusion about products is the whole point of trademarks.
Considering how many people could care less about going to an IMAX movie, perhaps it is intentional. Of course, I still do not care...
Usually the kind of people who get paid by how tight they can clench their buttcheeks.
"I object to our brand being used to describe ultra-high quality."
Now if the VALVE said that, they would have a case, as it would be appropriation--they would need to work a deal to get an endorsement, but to censor an article for making the comparison (especially when used in such a positive light), is just plain stupid, whether or not they have a case.
you can't mention a trademark ? you are crazy.
Ars didn't do anything wrong. IMAX can go fuck themselves.
Slahdot Censored by IMAX!
Whoops! Will Slashdot have to take that down, like some Scientology thing?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
disclaimer:im not your lawyer.
for those outside the states copyright here is taken incredibly seriously as im sure we're all well aware. If your name becomes a commonplace descriptor it can lose its trademark status entirely. for example, if everyone started saying " I need to pepsi jim about the proposal" or "I cant pepsi this document outside the firewall" then pepsi would lose that trademark. Better examples are in the case of Kleenex and velcro, who sat around until their trademarks became ubiquitous references to a process or commonplace task. IMAX is working to prevent their technology from being relegated to a vague descriptor of large size and high quality.
Good people go to bed earlier.
IMAX apparently doesn't understand trademark or copyright at all.
Simply mentioning IMAX in an article isn't "use of trademark".
Had Ars set up a company selling things tagged with IMAX logos, THAT is use of trademark.
Fucking idiots.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes trademarks totally different.... In a way you clearly don't understand.
Trademarks only need to be defended if someone else is attempting to use it to trade goods. Hence the name trademark.
Think about any article you've read about an apple (tm) ipad(tm) was that ever a trademark issue? No it wasn't.
If ARS was saying "Check out our new ARS-IMAX news column! It's gots the IMAX HD's" that would be a trade mark violation as they are implying that they are backed by the IMAX brand.
-C
It doesn't matter if the usage is good or bad. If IMAX doesn't defend the trademark it gets diluted and becomes more difficult to defend in court.
Most people I talk to don't even know what an IMAX theater is, I think IMAX would welcome any added publicity they could get especially one that is apparently so glowing.
The only time I've seen companies censor trademarks is when they are selling a like/compatible product, and even then, not always. My bottle of WalMart generic dairy digestive pills proudly claims "This product is not manufactured or distributed by McNeil Nutrition, LLC, the distributor of Lactaid(r) Fast Act."
Ars is so in the right here, it's hilarious. IMAX's brand is tarnished with this information out there (That being that IMAX brand products support retarded lawyers). I'm rather certain you can't sue for that, though. Even if you did, your lawyers wouldn't be successful due to their mental handicaps, so who cares?
"The jump between a regular game and playing a room scale VR experience is X times 100. It’s like saying, 'I have a LARGE FUCKING TRADEMARKED SCREEN theater in my house.'
Edited. Done!
Life is not for the lazy.
Next auto magazines will have to stop saying, "...it drives as good as.... $OTHER_CAR..." and you can extrapolate to all the other goods in the world.
You are allowed to use a trademark. You can say, "I like IMAX theaters." You can say, "Ibuprofin is generic Advil." You can even say, "VR is like having an IMAX theater in my house." A trademark doesn't prevent people from using the word, which is why the letter is a lawerly request, not a cease and desist notice or threat to sue. IMAX can't really do anything more to stop this use of the word.
Trademark prevents people from doing business under a given word (or phrase). So if I start a company and name it "IMAX VR," then I can be sued out of existence because it would mislead people to believe that IMAX was selling VR. If I start a grocery store and name it Malmart, then Walmart would need to sue to protect their trademark.
Trademark is a way to protect consumers, to prevent imposter companies from doing business as someone else. Using the trademark in normal speech (or writing) is not going to cause problems.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Citation please?
Trademark still has fair use, and fair use can even be established if it is confusing.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Now will they dare to ask slashdot to take down my comments?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That's non-sense. It's more complicated than this. For one this is a clear freedom of speech issue. It was a quote at that. And it all comes down to brand confusion anyway and there is no brand confusion here. You'd have to be the dumbest person on the planet to argue there is. Obviously the *lawyers are*. There also isn't a requirement that you threaten every person/entity of the trademark. That would be absurd. Think about it for a moment. How many sites that you don't control contain your trademark? There is no way you could target every one of them or even a significant percentage of them.
BTW I wish OpenOffice were trademarked, that way people could figure out which download link to use when searching for "open office" on Google.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's weird I always assumed IMAX was just a generic term for theatre with a big ass screen?
Let me put this another way... ask anyone what do you call a movie theatre with a big ass multi-story curved screen? ... and before they answer say ...but you can't use the word "IMAX".
In various contexts people talk about IMAX cameras and film formats even NASA folks talking about the imax camera for curiosity ... I seriously always assumed it was just a generic specification.
Who knows that IMAX is a brand? Perhaps they have already suffered severe dilution and currently deserve no trademark/brand projection of any kind.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure you're allowed to mention brand names in reviews and articles. They may not like it but I don't think there is anything they can really do about it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Trademarks don't apply to reviews/criticism. Otherwise Slashdot couldn't run an article about IMAX sending a complaint to Ars.
They're comparing a level of excitement, there is no direct comparison with IMAX... It's like saying "it feels like my first time at Disneyland as a kid"... It's quite clear. There is absolutely zero legal standing here, even less than most other stories about overzealous 'legal' teams trying to justify their fees without the least bit of conscience, and creating PR nightmares...
Apparently, they've never heard of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution either.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I don't think this is true. No, I'm not an attorney but it would certainly fall under Fair Use. They can't legally prevent you from mentioning a brand name in an article. If it was truly defamatory, perhaps...but that would be a matter for the courts to decide, no?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
^^^^^^^^ This. IMAX has no power to prevent someone from mentioning their existence.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
People actually read Ars? It went down the tubes even harder than Slashdot. And Slashdot is circling the drain now thanks to Dice!
Dude, we are suing you for the iMax. You can't change a single letter from the name of our product, iMac, and call it your own!
And don't you know that we *own* the letter 'i'?
... saying "our new car is as fast as a BMW" could be restrained due to the unauthorized use of the BMW trademark. I believe this would fall into the category of "fair use" (if it was copyright, I believe there's a similar doctrine for reasonable use of a Trademarked term)
I assume IMAX (the company which I expect I CAN comment on) is worried about the possibility of pervasive VR taking some seats away from theater attendance.
IMAX published an apology and admitted they overreacted. IMHO this is exactly the right thing to have done.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Trademarks owners must defend against wrongful/confusing uses of their trademarks, not against every uses not explicitly authorized... It's just harassment here.
It's one thing to misrepresent a trademark. The folks at Dow Chemical Company go nuts when people call something Styrofoam that isn't actually made out of said substance. But here, something was simply compared to Imax in a simile, "a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid" (Google). Absolutely no misrepresentation. Completely proper use.
Yes, yes you can. You might want to bone up on trade mark law sometime zippy.
You can use trademarks as often as you want provided you attribute them correctly.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It looks like IMAX has issued and "IMAX sized" apology to ARS for this issue.
I'm guessing that IMAX owners/shareholders WANT the Streisand Effect... consider:
No such thing as bad publicity? Bring customer awareness/chatter of IMAX to many news sites and media... ...
profit from increased overall traffic & users?
IMAX doesn't know trademark law. But for the dumb-asses out there...FTA:
"First of all, this isn't a story about IMAX, and it contains just one (nice!) reference to IMAX. The statement wasn't Ars' speech at all, but one that an Ars writer chose out of many possible interview quotes. But that's all a bit of an aside, because the important point is that despite Ruby's fantastical interpretation of what a trademark means, we're actually allowed to say whatever we want about IMAX. I can say IMAX screens look like SteamVR, or that they look like my 47" Vizio TV, or that they remind me of purple bunnies. We can review IMAX directly, we can compare it to other products, we can love it, we can hate it—all without IMAX's permission."
Ars Technica could have misspelled it "iMAX" and pissed off both IMAX and Apple.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
As this post includes an unauthorized reference to IMAX, needs to be removed immediately I guess.
Not shocked Slashdot is only posting the story now and not even mentioning the retraction. This is the same group of people that sat on the Sourceforge story as long as they could.
They did.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
IMAX IMAX IMAX FUCK IMAX
VR cannot come sooner... If I can replace massive screens and projectors with a single headmounted screen, I'm fine with that.
Hello, Mr. Head of IMAX Legal Affairs? Legal counsel for Conde Nast, here. Doin' great, thanks for asking! Well, one of our smaller subsidiaries, Ars Technica, you heard of them? Yeah, well they got a little nasty-gram from one of your assistants regarding use of a trademark. Used the term "IMAX" in an article for referring to a wide-screen projection system, as a comparison. No, favorable comparison! Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, to be blunt, this is wasting everyone's time. I mean, these writer-geeks are going ape-shit over here. My guys were put on alert, all the brass over here had to get involved, the journalists want to go into a feeding frenzy, and I had to answer my phone during lunch and it's Friday! Was this just a case of one over-zealous legal going overboard? Hey, it happens to everybody. Thanks, no need to fire 'em, but a reprimand, at least, 'cause nobody wants to see this again. I think if your office can get some kind of a retraction out by the end of the day, I can keep my people from going bananas and put this all behind us before it winds up on the evening news. Great, that's great. I knew I could count on you. Hey, let's do golf soon, and I mean it this time. Great. I'll have my people call your people.
Aww come on.. You know IMAX has got to keep their army of liars err lawyers busy... Gotta generate those "billable hours", so said bozos can keep up the payments on their yachts/BMWs/Mercedes... /sarcasm
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
they only apologized because they attacked someone with a platform and it went sour. if this was ANYONE who couldn't fight back they'd continue acting like bloodlusting vultures.
ever since i got a HD projector, i havent gone to movies or IMAX. i host parties at my place for friends. now ill officially boycott IMAX and i encourage everyone else to pick up a projector and do the same
Now that IMAX has sent their IMAX Sized mea culpa don't you feel like an idiot? You should have known better, really.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
We should probably all stop mentioning them anyway. If they don't want journalists to mention their name, reviewers and movie listings shouldn't either.
Given that /. is a for-profit website, why is it permissible for them to run this story if what you're saying is true? For that matter, how can any story that mentions any brand ever be run on any news site, of which almost all are run as for-profit enterprises?
Your claims don't even meat a basic standard of common sense, so even not knowing the laws surrounding trademarks, that you could make such a claim at all boggles the mind.
I just took an enormous IMAX and had to use the plunger to get it to go down. My house still smells of IMAX, so I opened the window.
And my 13" Sony black & white TV from 1970 is like an IMAX that rests on my belly when I'm watching Wheel of Fortune. Except I have to hold the antenna or I get fuzz.
Just like I have fuzz on my IMAX.
You are welcome on my lawn.
/ end joke
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If I ran Ars, I would have responded with a promise that IMAX would never be mentioned in any form on Ars or any of its affiliates ever again.
IMAX sucks. The few theaters you find in science museums, the original IMAX screens, are pretty cool, but the vast majority of tiny screen theaters being marketed as IMAX and up-charged accordingly are lies! My I's have seen more, that is not their MAX!
Reviews are one specific and long-standing example of fair use, so I would say that Ars has immunity here.
In this very thread, we will have to start calling it "Large-screen movie chain that keeps closing down in location after location."
Commentary in journalism is one of the important exceptions. They're not using it as their brand.
The trademark lawyers are practically robots, and in some cases literally so. They probably grep'd IMAX and fired off a C&D without looking at it, as happens millions of times a day. They generally back down if you point out that your usage was fair and that the mark ownership was acknowledged, because they spam these things like no tomorrow to protect the mark (you can thank judicial precedent for this) and they're mostly a waste of everyone's time.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Why do you think "for-profit" has anything to do with it? They can mention all the trademarks they care to. They could publish and sell a list of all the trademarks if they wanted to.
My apologies. I replied to the wrong post.
I read the exchange on Ars, and I'm not convinced IMAX has properly understood their egregious error. Their apology said, "... in this situation we acted too quickly without truly understanding the reference to our brand. ... we will try to be better at taking compliments ...". That reads to me like they still think the take-down request would have been appropriate if the reference was uncomplimentary. But, as Ars pointed in their open response to the request, it would still have been an inappropriate action in that case for many reasons; and so the IMAX lawyer was (and is?) demonstrating unforgivable ignorance or disregard of the relevant laws.
As it seems IMAX came to their senses and apologized for that ridiculous demand :) Here is the link: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Sure you can. You can always use the trademark name as long as it does not cause confusion about the trademarked item. Ie, you can't say "I have an IMAX like system", or "we've applied IMAXification to our game". But you can say "IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX". You can say "IMAX is boring" all you like. You can probably name your feminine hygiene product "IMAX" as there is unlikely to be confusion between the two products (though it may make IMAX angry they have to suck it up).
Some confusion perhaps because you see a lot of movies that explicitly list all product placements. This makes some people assume that movie studios are required to get permission for product placements, but this is not true. Instead what you have is Pepsi offering some small money for their product to be used instead of Coca-Coloa.
A trade mark is NOT the same as copyright! You do not need any permission to copy that word as often as you want. The legal specifics of fair use does not apply because this is not a copyright, but the sense of fair use most certainly applies. So repeat after me: IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX, IMAX. IMAX sux, IMAX sux, IMAX sux, IMAX sux.
Just mention them in a context that applies a different connotation to the name. As in "I have to stay home from work today, I got a bad case of the IMAX."
Oh ya, now I just read that they quickly apologized. Probably a case of a hair-trigger lawyer on staff. Too late to call of the Streisand effect?
Do you have any examples of this? I'd be curious to see a couple as I can't seem to find examples after some searching.
I think you may be mistaken, and part of the reason is because IMAX sent an apology letter to Ars as follows:
This is an IMAX-sized mea culpa to you, your team at Ars Technica, and your readers.
We are very passionate about our brand and sometimes we can be overzealous in trying to protect it. Unfortunately in this situation we acted too quickly without truly understanding the reference to our brand.
Again—we apologize for how this was handled and we will try to be better at taking compliments moving forward!
So as near as I can tell, a company like IMAX cannot prevent you from referencing them in an article or other publication.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Actually I bet this is more like the issue Xerox has with 'Xerox machines' they don't want the term imax to become a common word for all large format viewing experiences as it would void the trademark on its name.
Sure they have.
Remember folks. It's not about who's right or wrong. It's "what can we get away with, without causing something to blow up in our faces".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I once said my girlfriend sucked like a Hoover.
The favour was returned with a lawsuit by a multi-national corporation.
the usage is a reference to a real IMAX product so it is a valid use of the trade name. now we know IMAX has at least one attorney that is apparently more oriented to procedure than actual law.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Peter Bright, alias "GOITER-LAD" subjecting us to his hideous visage, all quasimodo like as it really is! Ask DrPizza/Peter Bright why he always takes photos with his hand over that bloated deformed chin if nobody believes that so they can verify it themselves with his photos online.
No, but they can launch a frivolous lawsuit hoping that Ars Technica doesn't have a warchest to defend themselves. Which is pretty much standard legal practice when it comes to the media.
Citation, please? It astounds me how many /. posters (all of whom it should be considered rational to presume to be absurdly pedantic neckbeards) post arguments and/or quotations without citations. We should all know better. In the mean time, in the absence of a citation, I shall assume you are pulling that IMAX quote directly from your well-exercised excretory region.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
The article that we're all talking about now includes reference to this. Just click the articles in the summary, and ctrl+f for "apolo" and you'll find it.
It is true that at the time Slashdot posted this, it was not in the article. But by the time he made that post, the sentence was already referenced in TFA.
The amazing thing is that the follow-up letter they sent him was an actual apology, not lawyerese gobbledygook.
As mentioned below, there are references in the article to the page that contains the apology.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...