Owner of the Word Stealth 'Protecting' Rights

popo writes "Just when you thought ownership of intellectual property couldn't get any more absurd: The New York Times is reporting that the word 'Stealth' is being vigorously protected *in all uses* by a man who claims to exclusively own its rights. Not only has he gone head to head with Northrop Grumman, he has pursued it vigorously in the courts and has even managed to shut down "stealthisemail.com" (Steal This Email.com) because the URL coincidentally contains the word "stealth". What's terrifying is that he's gotten as far as he has."

hoho

[CloudDrakken]

exclusive rights to a word used centuries ago, this guy seems legit.

Re:July Fools???

[mattjb0010]

Talk about prior art.

Trademark != patent.

can you trademark common words??

[Dr Kool, PhD]

I didn't think you could. Otherwise you'd have people patenting words like "the" and "it" and we'd all be screwed over.

Re:July Fools???

[Anonymous Coward]

You can trademark a single word and then harrass people who happen to use it? What's so particular about 'stealth' that would it make it different than trademarking the word 'the'.

I still call BS, if it's not, I'm afraid...

Re:can you trademark common words??

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Yeah, imagine how dumb it would be if we could trademark words like 'windows' or 'apple'.

What a nice guy

[senatorpjt]

(From TFA) In 2002, the Illinois attorney general sued Leo Stoller after he used a Web site to solicit donations illegally on behalf of victims of the destruction of the World Trade Center.

No, this guy's not a total fucking scumbag...

You know, we used to have a simple solution

[ShatteredDream]

for stuff like this.

Someone who's this greedy, self-centered and determined to make a mess of everyone's life, liberty and property for his own advancement would discretely get his ass kicked one day on his way home from work. Seriously, the courts are too civilized of a way of dealing with things like this sometimes. Not that I'd recommend doing it to him, but there was a long period in our history where being this much of a troll got your ass tore up by a few "concerned citizens" for wasting tax payers' money with frivilous cases that were all about greed and nothing about justice.

Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots

[jfengel]

The most telling sentence in the article:

For all his time in federal courtrooms - Mr. Stoller says his companies have been in court 60 times - there is no record within the Lexis database of a federal court decision on "stealth" in his favor.

In other words, the man is a litigious idiot. The fact that he's occasionally managed to get people to license from him says more about the fact that people are terrified of lawsuits than that the law itself is unfair.

People are terrified of the law. I know I am; at any moment I could be sued and even if I win, it'll cost me thousands, with no way to recapture it. (And before a bunch of non-lawyers start demanding "loser pays", remember that "loser pays" just introduces other unfairnesses when the poor can't sue the rich.)

If programmers ran the world, the law would be clear, concise, and unambiguous. Or at least that's what they'd like to think. Anybody who's actually studied law knows that actual human interactions are full of corner cases, and ass-coverings easily outweigh the meat of most contracts.

If there were no litigious idiots, the law would be a lot simpler. Just like email would be lovely if there weren't a mountain of fools who think that "free" means "mine mine mine". Sadly, neither is the case. The courts are another commons, like email, and this jackass is ensuring that no commons it without its tragedy.

Fucktard.

Re:$10

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear. This litigious jerkoff needs to be publicly tied down and urinated on by passers-by.

Just my opinion.

Re:can you trademark common words??

[Max_Abernethy]

IANAL, but as I understand, trademarks are for a specific class of item. For example, some company could make a brand of gum called "It" and have that as their trademark, which means nobody else can make "It" brand gum or some product named "It" that could confuse consumers. From the article:

Mr. Stoller said that he also held and administered as many as two dozen other "stealth" trademarks, and insisted that his close association with the word gave him special rights.

I'd like to see the law that says if you have X trademarks for a word, you own it in every use. I have a feeling if someone stood up to this guy in court, this wouldn't stand, but from a big corporation's perspective it's cheaper to remove the words or settle for several thousand dollars than pay the lawyers' fees.

Re:So how about

[Mattintosh]

I'm more than positive that the Motion Picture Association of America is more than prepared for dealing with that sort of chaff in today's legal atmosphere.

That's because they are that sort of chaff in today's legal atmosphere. This is the problem they've caused coming back to bite them in the ass. More "intellectual property" rights means they lose too. It's just a matter of how quickly they buy laws to undo the ones they've recently purchased to cause this sort of imbalance.

Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution

[ErikTheRed]

Not that I'd recommend doing it to him, but there was a long period in our history where being this much of a troll got your ass tore up by a few "concerned citizens" for wasting tax payers' money with frivilous cases that were all about greed and nothing about justice.

I don't know - some parts of Texas are still that way...

Re:What happens when...

[blyloveranger]

Slashdot needs a +1 makes the parent look like an idiot mod.


cause I would use that one all the time.

Re:What a nice guy

[deft]

Wait. If you go back and read the article it said he did it the wrong way.

I think this guy is a tool, but he very well could have just decided to try and make a pool of money for these charities and promoted it... but didnt know there was apperwork that needed to be done to do it "officially".

He could very well have donated every penny as he probably stated he would.

I dont think it's too far off that if i decided to go collect some money from my neighbors and take it to the red cross, that I may be breaking some law, as good intentioned as I may be.

Re:But...

[protohiro1]

Yes but, this guy is still an asshole. The reason Apple and Sun should be able to trademark their names in their realms is because it would be lame if someone was out there selling "apple" computers, but they aren't apple. This guy has gone out and totally abused this system to turn it into his own personal extortion scheme. This is the same kind of attitude problem that makes everyone have to suffer through mounds of spam and spend months securing their websites. Some people are just complete assholes and do not care about anyone else at all.

Easy Solution.

[Karma Farmer]

This guy needs a good swift kick in the balls.

Seriously.

Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots

[Leftmoon]

Makes me wonder if a good lawyer wouldn't fill a QA/testing type of role with high capabilities. We could use more people with an eye for loopholes and supposedly impossible cases.

Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots

[ccmay]

People are terrified of the law.

Amen.

The answer is social opprobrium. The daughter of an acquaintance announced her intention to go to law school when she graduates college in a couple of years. I am afraid I was so scathing as to make her cry. But maybe she will reconsider going into such a low and deceitful and filthy "profession".

-ccm

Re:I know what to do

[FLEB]

Amend! Amend!

So I guess he's in the business of "everything"

[TX297]

All prior art aside, I thought you could only "license" or "defend" your trademark if a rival company decided to market things in your area or business but as far as I see it, he's suing/threatening anyone using the word "stealth" in any context. I haven't seen his company make any military bombers lately, or movie bombs for that matter. Someone tell me I'm not being outrageous in my claims )even though IANAL)... oh wait. -TX297

Just WOW

[GraZZ]

From Rentamark.com's Cease & Desist Section [rentamark.com]:

There are no well-known trademarks, service marks, trade names and/or domain names that have not already been adopted by some other company first; as in the case at bar. In the same manner that there is not any real property in the 21st Century that can be acquired for free or homesteaded. There is no free well-known intellectual property left in the 21st Century. No free rides!

I don't even know where to begin with this guy...

Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots

[cduffy]

No, that's if linguists ran the world.

Re:July Fools???

[Eric Damron]

It's not that people use the word. Nothing about Microsoft's trademark prevents us from using the word Windows. What it does do is prevent us from creating a similar product and calling it Windows or some other name that could confuse customer's.

This guy is a slime ball. He probably created some two bit company and called it STEALTH for the express purpose of bringing bogus lawsuits in the hopes of raking in a lot of money from nuisance lawsuits. I doubt that he has ever won a case. He probably doesn't pursue the cases very far but just hopes to settle out of court.

I think given his other actions

[Sycraft-fu]

It's safe to say he's a fucking sumbag. As the article noted, the purpose of a trademark is to prevent consumer confusion. So if I created Sycraft Amplifiers you cannot also go create Sycraft Amplifiers, that are much cheaper and inferior quality, and snag consumers with brand confusion.

I mean the guy sued Northrop for fuck sake. Nobody is going to confuse a B-2 Stealth bomber with anything this retard could make. He lacks the means to make military stealth aircraft, and the B-2 was first anyhow.

It's pretty clear this guy is just a scumbag who wants to leech money while doning nothing of value. I'm quite sure every dollar he collected for "charity" would have gone right in to his pocket.

Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots

[ryanov]

There are still a lot of good lawyers out there. Perhaps you've heard of the ACLU? If not, I'm sure you could find any number of mentions of their work on any number of freedom-related topics in the /. archives.

Not everyone goes into law to chase ambulances or become a barrator (though you often have to start there).

Slashdot the bastard!!!

[PsiPsiStar]

http://rentamark.com/ [rentamark.com]

And remember to hold down the "Shift" key when you hit "refresh"

Re:Article text = Infringing copy

[indaba]

Why do people on /. continue to think that it's OK to copy entire articles ?

It's not OK. It's not stealing, or theft or any other verb like that ; those are emotive words that also don't acurately reflect what has happened.

What has happened is copyright infringment ; an unlawful act.

The NY Times creates this content, it has to pay a writer, support a webserver, pay bandwidth bills.
In return, for creating this content for u to read, all they ask is that u look at some ads.

I think that's a reasonable exchange, that I agreed to. If you don't think it's reasonable, then you shouldn't break the law to allow others to circumvent it.

Re:July Fools???

[general_re]

The concept does very much exist in most (all?) US courts, though, but the bar is typically set quite high. Having one's day in court is generally seen as a fundamental right, so judges are usually loathe to pull that trigger - you have to work at it pretty hard to get yourself declared a vexatious litigant in most places.

Re:July Fools???

[ziekke]

I believe that it is because he trademarked the word stealth in several contexts, not just a single one.

Re:Article text = Infringing copy

[Frodo Crockett]

Why do people on /. continue to think that it's OK to copy entire articles ?

There are a variety of reasons, but in this case, it's because most people don't want to go to the hassle of registering with the NY Times to view an article. Sure, you can go to bugmenot (like I did), but that's almost as much hassle as registering.

Yes, it's copyright infringement, but I think that the benefit it provides (more people RTFA, leading to better discussion) outweighs any harm the NY Times suffers.

They lose ad revenue, but they also don't have to pay for the bandwidth of thousands of slashdotters viewing the article on their servers. (Note that this will never happen, unless they remove their registration requirement.)

Unlawful? Yes. Immoral? Maybe, but so is tracking people's reading habits, which is the only reason I can think of for requiring "free" registration.

Trademarking words is dumb

[Dracos]

And trademarking 800 year old words [etymonline.com] is totally moronic.

Re:Article text = Infringing copy

[LMariachi]

Immoral? Maybe, but so is tracking people's reading habits

How is this "immoral," especially given that the people being tracked are anonymous? All they're doing is learning that, say, people who read a lot of articles about tennis also tend to follow British politics, or that hardly anyone makes it through to the last page of Joe Reporter's economics stories. It doesn't carry the slightest possibility of hurting anyone.

Re:July Fools???

[damsa]

Not necessarily, it's called reverse confusion. If there are two users of the mark BMW, the more famous user may assert that it has priority. Or that there is a logical connection from a company that makes cars would naturally enter the market for making clothes.

Re:Personal Experience

[morzel]

I'd signed up for some pay-per-month legal service, including the added protection for my business, and yet had never used it.

You guys have pay-per-month legal services???

How litigious can a society get, when lawyers are just one more utility service. Boggles the mind, really.

The World is Indeed Full of Idiots

[gidds]

Well done. We should hate and deride all lawyers coz some of them behave like bastards.

Just like we should hate and deride all computer programmers just coz some of them behave like bastards and write viruses.

Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution

[Mjec]

Violence
is
NOT
the
answer

Would you like me to say that slower? The courts are designed to deal with this so we don't have witch-hunts. So we don't have random people getting the arses kicked for things they didn't do because vigilantes are too lazy to do proper fact checking. Courts exist for a reason. They are good. They are effective. And if I ever catch you promoting this crap again...

... I'll inform a district attorny who will hopefully charge you with inciting hatred. Because that's what laws are designed to do. Protect. And they can proect us whenever we need it. We never need vigilante violence.

(As a PS: I don't mean to say that self defence is bad. I mean that if you can at all help it, don't be violent)

Re:July Fools???

[SillyNickName4me]

Yep, but to have him declared a vexatious litigant is actually more trouble for the courts, since they then have to review every bullshit case he wants to file, and decide whether to let him file it.

Courts are here to serve society, not the other way around. Part of that is preventing such a burden on society, so the argument that it is easier for courts is not valid.

Also, after having gone through this a few times, and having shown that this behavior only gets you trouble with no chance on success will help preventing this kind of thing, which in the end reduces workload for courts, not increase it.

Re:What happens when...

[sixteenraisins]

I read about that in TFA and it got me to wondering, did Northrop Grumman use the word "stealth" in naming and/or marketing the plane, or is that a dictionary term the press and the U.S. government just used to describe it (and the public henceforth adopted as an unofficial name)? I think (I may be wrong) that the official "name" of the aircraft is the B2 Spirit - nothing about "stealth" in that name.

One telltale sign, I don't remember ever seeing "stealth" capitalized when describing it, which leads me to believe it's being used as an adjective, not as a name.

Re:July Fools???

[Secret Agent X23]

I have s aneaky suspicion that he did it to make a point. Unfortunately, if he comes out and says or blatently acts like he did it only to make a point, it won't work anymore. So he files bogus, stupid lawsuits in an attempt to get the law changed.

I thought so, too, at first. But after reading TFA and looking at the guy's web site, my opinion is that he's serious about it. I think he's taking it much farther than anywone would just to make a point.

Re:July Fools???

[SillyNickName4me]

Valid or not, that's why the courts are so reluctant to do it.

Well, I understand that, but that really comes down to them being reluctant to do their job.

Re:I know what to do

[Anonymous Coward]

* Except if Disney asks for it...