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U.S. trademark registration 4,473,631 was issued to one Paul Ingrisano, aka "Pi Productions Corp" of New York. In January, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gave Ingrisano a trademark on the symbol π. pi followed by a period: a design Ingrisano uses on T-shirts sold at some brick-and-mortar stores.
When Ingrisano discovered that California-based print-on-demand outlet Zazzle offered an array of clothing items that featured the symbol pi, he had his attorney send the company a strongly-worded cease-and-desist letter this month demanding their removal.
"This would be like McDonalds claiming the letter M as a trademark," wrote Jez Kemp, whose Zazzle store offers apparel imagining pi dressed in a pirate costume. "The trademark is in the combination of style and symbol, not the symbol itself."
Attorney Millet defends the cease-and-desist letter. He says that to his knowledge none of the designs sold through Zazzle included the exact trademark π. -- pi followed by a period -- but some of them were confusingly similar to his client's design.
In 2011, Ingrisano attempted to trademark "I<3" artnet reports, which was "published for opposition" in June 2013. Reebok's intellectual property watchdogs claimed in a December 14, 2013 "Notice of Opposition" that "I<3" is too close to comfort to its own "I3" trademark.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday June 04 2014, @01:34AM
Overall, you have some interesting points, but I have to take issue with some of them.
Your first statement doesn't make sense. On one hand you say that being small has intrinsic defensive benefits, and on the other hand you say it doesn't matter because the the small person couldn't defend himself anyways. Roughly translated, "You're fucked, man"
From my own personal experience the first part is incorrect. A rather famous chain of Mexican restaurants in Houston, TX was started by an illegal immigrant (may be true) selling her tamales from her own back porch in violation of city ordinances. Overtime she became famous at the street level, as every Houstonian knows you are in a constant search for the best food. As an aside, Houston is a culinary mecca in the US and easily one of the top 3 IMHO cities for food. She worked very hard and made a name for herself.
Consider for a moment you were an enterprising elite with access to capital at fair rates. You could easily just lie and brand your restaurant, or series of tamale food trucks with her brand. I think you overestimate just how much people care to verify information or sources. Average people tend to go with what is in front of them at the moment. This elite can capitalize on and exploit this woman's admirable effort to create something for herself. I would submit that we would both wish to reward hard works and efforts.
On to the matter of resources and being useless to the masses, I think you are very incorrect. If we go back 150 years to the Wild West, you could apply your argument to any number of situations including murder. Having some civilized order in society is not a bad thing. Guess what we have today? Strong deterrents like widely available access to communications, 911, and CSI investigations. The resources are largely free, ignoring taxation for the moment, and freely accessible to all regardless of the state of your taxation.
So the elite never even attempted to exploit the old woman in the first place because the deterrent was real, and that was a matter of trademark law (among others). It's not so high of a barrier either to access those resources. A retainer fee for a modestly competent lawyer would have only been a few grand, and she is a small business owner remember. Plenty of lawyers are willing to take such things on contingency. What does she care if the lawyer gets all the money? She just wants a cease & desist to result in actual ceasing and desisting.
It's especially true today with the power of social media. I no longer shop at Staples because their shit head CEO decided to be "butthurt" about ObamaCare and lowered everyone's hours to 29 to not have to offer medical care to pregnant women in his employ. Despite the fact that the increase only cost a percentage of his near $50 million compensation package across only 4 years.
This assumes they have an interest in doing so, but it's a very good idea at least superficially. Keep in mind that you are just shifting the expenditure of resources from one supporting business sector to another one. It's not as if you got rid of it. Your idea does have some merit in that it removes the often predatory legal maneuvers that are arguably quite damaging to a free market.
The analogy in history would have been guilds. If you wished for high quality product you sought out a member in a reputable guild. The guild itself was self policing, and a customer could go direct to the guild, lodge a complaint, and show poor craftsmanship. Of course, this was in a day and age where we had apprentices and quality mattered. Not the absolute cheapest fabrication costs only designed to keep a product operational till planned obsolescence.
It does hurt sales of the owner of the mark. The argument is whether they are deserving of legal protection as it's in the best interests of society to do so. Notice I don't say the corporation. They're not people regardless of what some corrupt politicians want us to think. Is it of interest to protect the owner?
I would argue that it is, and there is interest in protecting the consumer. Some consumers do actually care about the brand name in a very superficial and shallow way (read:vanity), but some are also interested for humanitarian reasons such as an EFF t-shirt. I would be incredibly pissed off if I purchased an EFF t-shirt and the proceeds didn't go at all towards them.
OTOH, If I all I wanted was a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, I don't give two craps if the money goes to Disney or not. Take something not as strongly associated with a brand name like a wolf howling at the moon.
What you want is the Roman system of Caveat emptor. It sounds great on the surface. Who doesn't want to turn back the tides on this touchy-feely-check-your-privilege-victim-society we have? People should have personal responsibility and Caveat emptor is not a nanny state by any stretch of the imagination.
It's a two edge sword though, especially in today's environment. Information Asymmetry. It was easier back then to determine the quality and worth of an item. Under Caveat Emptor there are ways in which the consumer can be lied to that are not eligible for remediation. At least, you would find just as many legal arguments after the fact. Caveat emptor does not result in a system that is measurably better on the whole. It has it's own detractions WRT to consumer protections.
What does that have to do with brand names anyways? Not so much, but it does have an awful lot to do with marks regarding membership to modern "guilds" if you will. Stating that you meet the standards of something by misappropriating a mark indicative of FOSS could be an example. Saying your tablet is endorsed by the EFF with their mark is another.
If there is one thing we agree on though, is that something must be changed now for the betterment of consumer protections. Perhaps there is a middle ground.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.