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AOL Trademarks nixed
Robert Wilde writes "A small dose of sanity in the world of trademarks, according to a ZDNN story; the courts have ruled AOL doesn't own "You've got mail," "IM," or "buddy list." " So, I suppose that means my copyright for "E-Commerce Solution" and "E-mail" is probably out as well.
So is AOL's trademark application for the word "wardialer" still pending? Has anybody figured out why in the world AOL considers themselves to have a valid claim over the word (or why they'd want to)?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...got milk?
:) -- Smiley not trademarked
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
The trouble is that in the world of high-tech, those codenames are used as early marketing tools. There are magazine articles written about them, the specs are often available, the companies have webpages for them ... these guys are not blameless, they KNOW they are marketing tools.
... this is the law! ... you can lose it. While "Sagan" wasn't likely trademarked by the good doctor, there are laws about unauthorized use of celebrity images and names.
Besides, it's not that Lucas was pissed off. It's that "Jedi" is a trademark in itself, and if you do not protect a trademark
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Today it was also discovered that, contrary to popular belief, Microsoft Corp. does not own the trademarks to "General Protection Fault", "Fatal Exception Error" or "Please restart your computer".
Wah!
Here
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
You forgot "Abort, Retry, Fail?"
Do not read this
Now I don't have to add: "the phrase 'You've got Mail' is a registered trademark of America Online, Inc." That kinda annoyed the family.
What about the people who don't know how to use proper punctuation? The ones who say "Im going to the mall." Do they have to pay AOL for the use of the term "IM"?
/SARCASM
Although this brings up an interesting point....Did AOL own that patent at any time BEFORE this ruling? There was that movie "You've got Mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Did they have to pay AOL royalties for that title? Aren't they entitled to get those royalties back?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Oh well, I'll just have to patent the use of wood or stone, organised in a cuboid structure, with a hollow interior. I'm thinking of calling it a "building".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My favorite trademark infringement story ever:
Apple had a habit of naming it's internal secret projects after various things. One project was dubbed internally as "Sagan", with respect to, of course, the sci-fi writer Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan learned of this and threatened to sue Apple for the unauthorized use of his name. Apple quickly complied, chaning the name of the project to "Stuck-up astronomer." Or so the story goes.
Heehee.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Well, Instant Messenger as a tradmark isn't really ridiculous. For AT&T to come out with a similar product and give it an identical name is really shady. What if Mitsubishi came out with a car called the "Plymouth" and argued that, hey, Plymouth is a popular name. Bullsh*@#$%&t. We don't complain about IBM which has a TM on "International Business Machines", and I don't see how you can get much more generic than that.
It's just fashionable to bust on MS and AOL these days.
--JRZ
Throw out silly patents? Nahhh... that'd be way too much work!
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I suspect (not having seen it, I can't confirm) that the title was actually in the end an example of product placement. In other words, AOL paid THE MOVIE PRODUCERS for them to use the title, instead of the other way around.
For a while in pre-production the film had a couple of different titles (such as You Have Mail), only changing to You've Got Mail in April '98 -- so it's likely that they initially avoided [read:played coy] any association, until AOL ponied up in some way (which could have been as simple as running "co-op ads").
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
For those interested...
http://www.wolfstonelaw.com/saganslande r.html
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Hear, hear! Actually, I'm in favor of some laws occasionally, but every law should not only be necessary but should be periodically reviewed (or reviewable on demand).
But I think every law can be analyzed in terms of how much freedom it either safeguards or removes -- and that this is the most important benchmark. Not "how many lives can be saved," "making an important moral statement," "protecting members of Interest Group X," etc.
Today's politicians are (with few exceptions) late-Roman empire types, dispensing favors in order to keep their purple togas -- not the revolutionaries who broke from Brittain and said "No taxation without representation." Instead, it's "Taxation is OK, so long as my district gets a portion of gravy, and my friend here gets the contract for ladling it out."
just thoughts (with the conclusion that voting l/Libertarian is the least evil thing to do
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I'll agree with Dr. Wiggnz that we need some strict Constitutionalists if we are to defend free speech rights and privacy, but remember, that is a position that requires some extrapolation to take -- nowwhere, for instance, is a 'right to privacy' outlined in the Constitution, and many people clamor *against* 'strict Constitutionalists' on the basis that they would try to inhibit free speech. (See examples below.)
And the difference between a strict Constitutionalist and an extremist is that the first (to those who support it) is a positive term and the second is nearly always pejorative unless used by people who know that *other* people are using it pejoratively. Without getting into whether you like his views (those I've read I have liked, but I'm no expert on his entire body of work), consider whether you consider Robert Bork a) "an extremist" or b) "a strict Constitutionalist," both
of which he might agree with (I would).
How about Patrick Henry?
Barry Goldwater? ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.")
The other thing to consider is that freedom of speech is a complex thing. I think it would be silly if AOL got the trademark for "You've got mail," both because similar phrasing has been used in other pre-AOL systems for many years and because it is a simple descriptive sentence.
I'm suprized that "Buddy List" though got nixed, and if I were AOL I'd feel cheated
Just some thoughts -
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5