Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#2Did 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?
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#3[deleted]
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#4It is a trademark, not a patent nor copyright. There was not copyright violation, and not trademark violation. Zazzle jumped the gun. If they had actually read the letter they could just have ignored it.
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#5[deleted]
You should take care to notice that this is not a patent, but rather a trademark, which falls under an entirely different set of laws and practices.
In particular, they likely just have a trademark to make shirts with the pi symbol and a period afterwards. While you may disagree that they should not be allowed to have such a trademark, it is the name of their company, and they have to enforce the trademark if they want to keep it. Because this is a trademark, they have to prove that someone else is trying to pass off a product as one of their own in order to take punitive action against the opposing party. What this means in practice is that if someone uses the pi symbol in a paper or on the internet, it's likely not to be confused with the t-shirts they are selling, so therefore there is no trademark infringement. However, if you're selling t-shirts that have a pi symbol on it in a similar fashion, you're opening yourself for litigation. It is also important that they take action against companies that are infringing on their trademark lest they lose the trademark (which also happens to be in their company name).
In any case, this is just a silly story and has nothing at all to do with patents, and nobody should be worried unless you plan on making and selling t-shirts with a pi symbol on the front of them.
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#6Did 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?
Looks like your regular old Times New Roman font.
http://graphemica.com/%CF%80/glyphs/times-new-roman-regular
http://www.scribd.com/doc/227367808/Zazzle-Pi-Trademark-Lett...
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#7π.
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#8How 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 is not completely unlike the case of primary education in US. I have heard and seen horror stories about utter incompetence of math and science teachers in some schools. I get angry and indignant about it. But, in the morning, I will go back to programming. I will not be applying for a teaching certificate or whatever the first step is to become a teacher.
Painting with broad strokes here, it seem, this is the work non-experts doing experts' work. The tragedy is there are anti-incentives to attracting passionate or driven individuals in such positions. Bureaucracy, low pay, perceived cultural low status of the jobs, is probably the driving force behinds these kind of things.
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#9IANAL 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.
Re: Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web
#10π.
Money, please.