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Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

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Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

#11

Post by manicdee »

plink wrote: post #2

Did Mr. Ingrisano actually create and copyright a particular font used with his trademarked symbol or does his trademark apply to any use of that symbol followed by a period? Is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office testing how thin the ice upon which it can skate before the entire institution falls through?

The trademark covers exactly the "π" symbol displayed in the [Wiktionary page on Pi](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pi#English) followed by a period ".".

The guy did not create his own font. Zazzle just started pulling all the things with the π symbol on them, because as I'm sure everyone is aware, nobody has ever thought to put π on a T-shirt before, so obviously this guy's trademark on "π." takes precedence over all the copycats!

Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

#14

Post by sgdesign »

ilyanep wrote: post #9

IANAL but I'm pretty sure that a judge would never rule that there was possibility of confusion between all of these products on Zazzle and Pi Corporation. I think the real issue here is that Zazzle needs to exercise more discretion on which cease and desist letters it follows.

Yes, this definitely seems like a mistake on Zazzle's part.

And it's possible the artist may have been acting in good faith, and only wanted designs that actually copy his brand removed, not all designs featuring pi.

Edit: OK, it does seems like the artist is also abusing the system here, judging by his other trademark: http://news.artnet.com/art-world/artist-who-trademarked-pi-s...

Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

#15

Post by tluyben2 »

Weak Zazzle and anyone else actually taking this seriously in the first place, even if they reconsidered afterwards. The incentive to try to abuse the system is too great in the US and met with success way too often... Companies and individuals need to stand up against this kind of thing.

Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

#17

Post by slapshot »

rdtsc wrote: post #8

How does this happen? Who are the people who decide what is a valid patent/trademark and what isn't? We all here look at each other in disbelief (figuratively). Yes someone granted the the trademark thinking this is valid thing to do. I guess, thinking about it. No matter how indignant I would get about this topic, I really don't see myself dropping programming and applying to the Patent Office. It seems to me this i…

This case is about a trademark, not a patent. Any word or symbol that identifies a source of goods can be a trademark. Hence Apple getting a trademark on using the word "Apple" to sell computers even though people have been using the word "apple" to refer to fruit for hundreds of years. (The same goes for "Amazon" despite the river, "Windows" despite the ventilation system, and "Beats" despite the existence of rhythm). If one tried to sell computer parts under the name "Apple" or any reasonable variant thereof, it wouldn't be a defense to say "look, there's a fruit called the same thing."

The real problem here is that Zazzle caved in based on a weak letter about the trademark -- not that the trademark office somehow failed. If Apple Inc sent a letter to Zazzle asking to remove all references to the word "apple" in Zazzle, the problem wouldn't be that Apple's trademark is invalid (it's perfectly valid for selling computers), but rather that Apple would have stretched its trademark too far (it only grants the right to control uses related to selling computers). Same here. Somebody could quite reasonably sell computer products under the name "Pi" (see Raspberry Pi for example), but that wouldn't grant the right to remove all references to the number from Zazzle.

Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

#18

Post by slapshot »

coherentpony wrote: post #16

Are people allowed to trademark an arbitrary letter of an arbitrary alphabet? How about arbitrary collections of letters that may or may not form a 'word'?

Yes and yes. "IBM" doesn't form a word, but it's a perfectly valid trademark and you would be sued into oblivion (quite fairly at that) for trying to sell computer software or hardware as "IBM." Gatorade has a trademark on a capital "G" in the field of sports drinks because consumers have come to recognize the "G" line of products. "Google" is a mostly-made-up word (it was at least unfamiliar before Google became popular) and it is a valid trademark. "Apple" is a commonly known word and it is also a valid trademark. The symbol for Prince [1] is an arbitrary symbol that could also be trademarked.

The key fact is that trademarks protect the right to use a word or symbol in connection with selling goods or services in a certain field. Apple doesn't get to ban all uses of the word "apple" but you couldn't go sell your own products as "Apple Computing Stuff". Prince can't ban people drawing the symbol linked above, but he could sue anybody who released a CD with that as their cover artwork. Gatorade doesn't control all uses of the letter "G" but I wouldn't try selling a sports drink with just a capital G on the bottle.

Zazzle done messed up, but not because letters or symbols alone couldn't be trademark.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prince_logo.svg

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