Owner of the Word Stealth 'Protecting' Rights 745
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."
Oh no! (Score:3, Funny)
Jesus Chrysler (Score:5, Interesting)
Diamond Stealth Video Cards (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Diamond Stealth Video Cards (Score:3, Interesting)
July Fools??? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trademark != patent.
Re:July Fools??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:4, Informative)
At least, that's the way it's supposed to work - this dildo is apparently attempting to prove me wrong, and show that he can prevent anyone from ever using the word "stealth".
Re:July Fools??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:4, Interesting)
He can still only claim protection for the use of the word in those fields for which he is using the mark. He also has to actually be USING it, not just sitting on it. He doesn't get general protection unless his mark is so widely used that it would likely be confused even if it is in a field that they aren't currently using the mark in.
There ought to be a law (maybe there is) that says this kind of abuse of trademark is illegal - the penalty should be that he loses all rights to the trademark in all fields. People shouldn't have to give in to this kind of "legal extortion" just because it is cheaper to pay him off and stop using it than to fight it when they are in the right.
One way might be to require going through a "trademark dispute arbitration" which can give a preliminary ruling that, e.g. "stealthisemail.com" is not infringing on "Stealth tennis shoes" (or whatever) - if he wants to continue and take it to court, he risks losing the trademark entirely. The process should cost the losing party $500, and no additional damages could be claimed if it is found infringing and they agree to stop using it immediately. That limits the damage to $500, which I think plenty of people would be willing to risk to challenge something like this, and also costs the abuser $500 every time he gets denied.
Re:Made up words? (Score:3, Informative)
What would stop someone starting a totally different business of the same name are anti-dilution laws (which are new, and widely considered a bad idea).
Re:July Fools??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:5, Informative)
I have a US trademark on my band name Highland Sun registered in 3 classes - live performance, musical recordings, and clothing, because I sell T-shirts and stuff with my band logo on it. If I didn't have the mark registered on clothing, then 3rd parties could sell such swag without my permission, and they could interfere with my own sales of such items. (Obviously I'm not in any great danger of losing sales for this. But it happens to larger bands all the time, when they don't have savvy managers.)
In a lot of industries, not just entertainment, peripheral merchandising is just as important as the main product. So you'll find lots of companies registering trademarks in a wide range of classes, to cover the main product and anything else they can use to aid in their marketing.
Re:July Fools??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I understand that, but that really comes down to them being reluctant to do their job.
Re:July Fools??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:July Fools??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:July Fools??? (Score:3, Funny)
And (Score:5, Informative)
I liked the bit about Northrop Grummond paying him $10 to go away.
BTW, IANAL, but I believe there is such a thing in trademark law as prior commercial use. And I think it would be very difficult to trademark a common English word and then sue everyone who uses it in any commercial context which is what he is doing.
I mean, that would be like Microsoft suing Windex because they make a cleaner for windows or Apple suing a bakery because they make apple strudels....
Re:July Fools??? (Score:3, Funny)
Misleading article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Misleading article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Misleading article (Score:3, Informative)
"_Mac_ OS 9" (Score:5, Informative)
Microware's point of view was that they didn't need a win, just needed a legal basis to show that they hadn't abandond their trademark.
Essentially, the ruling was exactly that, and, IIRC, left the door open to revisit the issue if Apple were to drop the "Mac" part or attempt to use Mac OS 9 to enter the real-time domain.
He's taking on (Score:5, Informative)
He came after me, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:He came after me, too (Score:4, Interesting)
I ignored him but forwarded the dossier to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse http://www.chillingeffects.org/> who are compiling dossiers on these sorts of guys.
As a private individual, I'd be interested to see how the hell he thinks a character string in a DNS domain that can be parsed to extract the substring stealth infringes his right to....make money from the word Stealth: like that's a major contribution to society.
I should have published my book by it's working title "XML by Stealth" - might have given this guy indigestion as you can't copyright book titles!
Re:He came after me, too (Score:3, Informative)
The guy has a trademark claim, not a copyright claim. You can't copyright short phrases, title or not. You CAN, however, trademark them.
Just FYI.
Article text (Score:5, Informative)
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Can a man own a word? And can he sue to keep other people from using it?
Over the last few years, Leo Stoller has written dozens of letters to companies and organizations and individuals stating that he owns the trademark to "stealth." He has threatened to sue people who have used the word without his permission. In some cases, he has offered to drop objections in exchange for thousands of dollars. And in a few of those instances, people or companies have paid up.
"If a trademark owner doesn't go up to the plate each day and police his mark, he will be overrun by third-party infringers," Mr. Stoller, a 59-year-old entrepreneur, said in a telephone interview from his office in Chicago. "We sue a lot of companies."
Mr. Stoller owns and runs a company called Rentamark.com, which offers, among other things, advice on sending cease-and-desist letters and Mr. Stoller's services as an expert witness in trademark trials. Through Rentamark, Mr. Stoller offers licensing agreements for other words he says he owns and controls, such as bootlegger, hoax and chutzpah, and sells t-shirts and other merchandise through what the Web site calls its "stealth mall."
He is currently in a legal dispute with Sony's Columbia Pictures unit over a film that opens late this month. It is about elite Navy pilots and titled - what else? - "Stealth."
Mr. Stoller said he first registered "stealth" as a trademark in 1985 to cover an array of sporting goods. But in recent years, "stealth" has become widely used in marketing and branding circles to bestow a sense of the subliminal or the subversive or to convey an aura of lurking power.
Companies including the retailer Kmart and the consumer electronics maker JVC have stumbled into Mr. Stoller's territory and have removed "stealth" from their Web sites after hearing from him. Another electronics maker, Panasonic, omitted the word from a product called the "stealth wired remote zoom/pause control" after receiving one of Mr. Stoller's letters.
"If you can solve problems without going to court you're better off," said Russell J. Rotter, a lawyer for Panasonic, a division of Matsushita.
The best-known stealth brand may be the military's B2 stealth bomber, whose main contractor, Northrop Grumman, has fought Mr. Stoller to something of standoff. In 2001, the company paid Mr. Stoller $10 and agreed to abandon its trademark applications to use "stealth bomber" in spinoff products like model airplanes and video games. In return, Mr. Stoller agreed not to oppose Northrop's use of "stealth" in aircraft or defense equipment.
"We resolved it in a way that achieved our business purposes without in any way agreeing that Mr. Stoller's assertions were correct," said Tom Henson, a Northrop Grumman spokesman.
Trademark owners can obtain the right to use a word for commercial purposes and then to prevent others from seeking to use the same word for similar commercial purposes. For instance, the Delta Faucet Company, which has trademarked "Delta," could prevent another faucet company from adopting the name. But it cannot object to Delta Airlines because the two companies' products are not likely to be confused with one another.
A search of United States Patent and Trademark Office records found that Mr. Stoller and companies that share a Chicago post office box with him - Central Mfg., Stealth Industries, and S. Industries - hold at least two dozen registered trademarks for "stealth," covering such diverse products and services as crossbows, pool cues and insurance consultations.
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.
"We're entitled to own it with all goods and services," he said. "We were there first."
Some companies do recognize his rights to some uses of the word. Easton Spo
Re:Article text = Infringing copy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Article text = Infringing copy (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Article text = Infringing copy (Score:4, Informative)
Gotten So Far (Score:5, Funny)
Not really, I'd just have to say that he's been very furtive and sneaky about it, indeed, he's acted quite surreptitiously about the whole thing.
What a nice guy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this guy's not a total fucking scumbag...
Re:What a nice guy (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I think given his other actions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
You know, we used to have a simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Do you mean stealthily?
Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution (Score:4, Funny)
Do you mean stealthily?
No, it means he will receive an integer number of kicks in the ass. It's rather difficult to kick someone a fractional number of times.
Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution (Score:4, Funny)
What if you do a half-assed kick?
Re:You know, we used to have a simple solution (Score:3, Funny)
As opposed to continuously?
Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Just like Perl.
Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone who's ever spent any time programming has discovered something pretty similar.
The law's actually almost exactly like what a programmer would create:
1.0: Ten commandments. Look they're pretty obvious people. How the hell can you get them wrong.
1.0.1: Yes, it's still stealing even if you do intend to give it back.
1.5: Hmm. How did we miss rape? Technically you're not stealing anything physical. If she's unmarried, you're not coveting anything. OK, we'll add rape.
2.0: The seventeen commandments really don't have the same cool ring the ten commandments once had. So we decided to release 2.0: The Magna Carter.
2.7: OK, men can vote regardless of station in life. But they have to be over 21.
3.0 (Forked) So we decided to fork the law. A bunch of us used to work for BritainCo. but we were totally bummed out by their management. So we formed US Inc. We're still going to support legacy laws under the British system because, frankly, it works well enough, it's really big and it'd cost a fortune to overhaul it.
3.1 You know, let's stop calling these things version numbers. Let's call them "ammendments"
3.1.1 Adding guns. Everyone should be allowed a gun. It makes perfect sense in this day and age. If times change, people in the future will totally have the sense to understand this was an ammendment, relevent to the time, and so can completely be ammended back out, right?
etc.
We're up to 3.8.7.2.5.4.b.ii at the moment. At which point a lot of programmers are starting to talk about how they'd do it far better if they were allowed to create a truly optimized system.
At some point, no doubt, a Swedish guy will write a new system of basic laws and then others will build on it.
At which point the US will nuke him out of existence for sounding far too much like the German guy (Marx) who did something pretty similar and came up with a system that was bad for the entertainment industry and thus bad for America.
Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Happy Fork Day!
Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
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
The World is Indeed Full of Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like we should hate and deride all computer programmers just coz some of them behave like bastards and write viruses.
Re:Studies Confirm: The World is Full of Idiots (Score:4, Funny)
I hired a monkey to write my will, but all I got was the complete works of Shakespeare.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:bittorrent is next (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if he owns the trademark to utterly craptacular web design?
And some of the words?
Renaissance
Name of a period in history. A common word.
Stradivarius
Surname of a family of violin makers. Can you trademark someone else's name? And really expect them to licence it back from you?
Tirade
Hmm... I feel like going on one right now...
This guy is a total and utter bastard (is that one of his?) and his trademarking of words *and then going after people in unrelated industries* is even less convincing as a business tactic than anything SCO ever came up with.
Why Northrop Grumman caved in, I'll never know. They should have nailed his arse to the court documents and filed it under 'F' for
Re:bittorrent is next (Score:3, Funny)
B.) The logos are the ugliest things I've ever seen (goatse included), and half of them don't even load.
C.) Is "renting" your trademarks out actually a legitimate business strategy?
I'm actually not sure that's quite what goes on. If I'm understanding this correctly, people pay $300 a year so that RentAMark.com can "proclaiming to the world" that the phrase "tree house" "is famous, we
Re:bittorrent is next (Score:4, Funny)
He has not gone after Nmap (Score:5, Interesting)
-Fyodor [insecure.org] (who is now resuming the search for SCO products or marketing messages talking about Stealth
Not the first time... (Score:5, Funny)
(In case you didn't realise, I don't own the domain and this post was a joke >.>)
The article doesn't say that (Score:5, Informative)
What the article actually says about "Stealthisemail.com" is that Mr. Stroller sent an e-mail to the website telling them to shut it down. Then the article says about InterActivist Network (who runs stealthisemail.com):
Eric Goldhagen, a member of the InterActivist Network, said that members of his group planned to talk to lawyers and others who have received letters from Mr. Stoller to discuss ways to deal with his "stealth" claims. "The fact that somebody, just by claiming to own a word, can intimidate large companies and powerful law firms shows the damage, to an extent, is already done," he said. "If people like Stoller are allowed to get away with this unchallenged, there could be ripple effects to every form of public mass media."
which if you look closely seems to imply to me that they have not taken it to court yet, therefore have not been forced to shutdown. This is easily verified by going to the actual website which is still up.
Though I do agree with the general sentiment of the submitter that this whole thing is ridiculous. -Patrick
This Reminds Me... (Score:3, Funny)
ViaGrafix vs. ViagraFix (Score:5, Funny)
I had an acquaintance who worked at a company called Via Grafix in Pryor, OK. The company has been around at least since early nineties. Their website is viagrafix.com. He complained to me that they would get all this email about people asking about viagra. He said those people thought it said ViagraFix not ViaGrafix. I guess it was lucky they got the domain long before viagra came along.
They made a piece of software called DesignCAD, which is a stupid name, because CAD means Computer Aided Design.
Personal Experience (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, so my friend and I bought this domain, stealthisidea.com - as in Steal This Idea, and then never did anything with it.
Last summer, we get a packet, 1 inch thick, telling us we're in violation if his trademark on stealth, and that we were to cease all operations imediatly, and hand over the domain, and be prepared to pay damages.
Thinking this guy was just mistaken, I called him to clear up the matter. From moment 1 he was rude and abusive on the phone, demanding we meet his demands. After explaining the situation, he seemed to loose all grip with reality. He said we were violating his rights. He said he would have the police seize our computers and shut us down, all sorts of over the top crap. He took a very forceful tone, and quite frankly pissed me off. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was inappropriate to make those threats, and he just starting shouting loudly over me...
After the phone call, I dug into my records. I'd signed up for some pay-per-month legal service, including the added protection for my business, and yet had never used it. After finding the contact info, I got ahold of 'my lawyer' (actually just a lawyer at the firm asigned to my account) and explained the situation. He had me fax over a copy of the complaint.
In conversations with the lawyer, he agreed it was a frivilous complaint. You can walk into any hobby store and see models on the shelf for stealth airplanes, no TM symbol to be found next to the word stealth, let alone on the websites of companies that make these planes.
He spoke with the gentleman (if you can call him that), and asked for the registration numbers of the marks in question - none were ever produced. He told the gentleman that if he got a lawyer to bring a suit agianst us for such a rediculous claim, that he'd request sanctions against that lawyer.
We never heard from the guy again.
In the original packet were photocopies of letters to various companies, including JVC, asking them to cease production of various products with Stealth in the name.
I don't know if this guy actualy owns these marks (we never did get proof, but the fact that I produced a lawyer so fast may have been a deterent), but I do know he is an agressive, rude, and harassing individual.
The whole thing made me want to go trademark the common term 'sneak' as an alternative - after all, if someone (supposedly) let him register stealth, sneak should be just as valid.
Re:Personal Experience (Score:3, Informative)
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/jumpto?f=doc&state=saf 2 o6.2.511 [uspto.gov]
Interestly enough, this search [uspto.gov] leads to several other Stealth trademarks. I checked for torrent [uspto.gov] but couldn't find registered to this individual...though I didn't try looking too hard. However, it is obvious that the faster a knowledgeable judge can issue a smack down to this guy, the better.
Re:Personal Experience (Score:5, Informative)
http://trademarks.gusmanolaw.com/2003/06/from-tta
Re:Personal Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
How litigious can a society get, when lawyers are just one more utility service. Boggles the mind, really.
Conducting Your Own TESS Search (Score:4, Informative)
If nothing else, this guy is trying to make a fast buck by playing fast and loose with the trademark laws.
Easy Solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously.
Another Link (Score:3, Informative)
Just WOW (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Slashdot the bastard!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
And remember to hold down the "Shift" key when you hit "refresh"
some chutzpah! from the FA (Score:4, Funny)
Dear Mr. Dickerman: (Score:3, Funny)
Thank you for your cooperation.
Emily Flywheel
Flywheel, Shyster, Flywheel and Camshaft, Attorneys at Law
The guy's a genius (Score:3, Interesting)
First, from the article it's clear that he puts the "stealth" mark on nearly everything, including air conditioners. That at the very least gives him a legal basis to sue.
Second, he's more than willing to settle for what would be considered nominal amount. While a few grand might be nothing to K-Mart, if he gets enough of them they add up quickly.
The fourth and last is that he's never actually WON a lawsuit! He's had this great settlement record even though he gets his butt kicked everything he enters a court room. That takes a lot of balls.
I'm not saying I like the guy, or even respect him. In fact, if I could get away with it, I'd ensure he got a slow and painful death. I'm just saying he knows all the flaws in our system and he's taking good advantage of them. And maybe if enough people start doing this, our system will change for the better.
Here's a list of other trademarks he owns (Score:3, Informative)
He also offers to license to you such phrases as: Adult Entertainment,Big Screen,Blue Collar, and Back Country.
Suit was filed in April for his abuses (Score:4, Informative)
http://thettablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/defendants
There is a picture of his alleged office on that page too.
Also from the same site a post on the Columbia Pictures suit:
http://thettablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/columbia-p
The following qoute from the posting and the linked filing show that he hasn't been successful in enforcing his trademark like the NYT article leads you to believe.
Columbia's complaint includes a handy list of reported federal court cases involving Stoller and/or his companies. Columbia asserts that "No court in any reported opinion has ever found any infringement or dilution of any rights held by Stoller or his companies."
Re:What happens when... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What happens when... (Score:3, Insightful)
cause I would use that one all the time.
Someone trademark his name! (Score:5, Funny)
Then, every time he serves someone with legal papers, the trademarkee can write a C&D filled with flowerly language to him because the real, trademarked Leo "The Marktard" Stoller would never be such a mean person.
Re:What happens when... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What happens when... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, I'm going to trademark "Cock", and "Money Shot" and take over the porn industry.
Re:What happens when... (Score:3, Funny)
He got TEN DOLLARS?
I'd have held out for fifteen at LEAST! In fact, I'd have demanded Northrop pay for a twenty dollar blowjob! As it is, he got fucked up the ass for ten bucks!
Re:can you trademark common words?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:can you trademark common words?? (Score:5, Funny)
Aaaaugh! Aaaugh! Augh! Ohh! Don't say that word!
Re:So how about (Score:3, Funny)
Further, I wouldn't be surprised if this guys campagin goes after the theatrical production compan because of this movie. I would, however, be surprised if he got anywhere with it. I'm not
Re:So how about (Score:5, Insightful)
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:So how about (Score:5, Funny)
One. War Games. Everything since is crap.
Re:So how about (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know what to do (Score:5, Funny)
Would it be unconstitutional if Congress made a law to... you know... just smack this guy with a rolled-up newspaper or something?
Re:I know what to do (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I know what to do (Score:4, Informative)
For those of you like me
a bill of attainder [techlawjournal.com] is
Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.
The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed."
Re:Missing in action... (Score:5, Funny)
Stealth in action!
Re:while we're at it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Northrop Grumman stalemate? (Score:5, Informative)
So when he applied "stealth" to sporting goods, it meant you couldn't come out with similar products with similar names. Again, "similar" is up to courts to decide. If you've got "stealth" bowling balls, are "stealth" skis too close? What about golf balls?
Clearly it doesn't apply to airplanes, and honestly I don't know why Northrop didn't just invite him to court. Except that court is expensive, even when you win, and the fact that they paid him $10 is a lot less than the retainer on their lawyers. It's disgusting, I know.
I don't know why they ceded any rights to him at all without knowing more facts about the case. They imply that they weren't seeking their own trademarks, but may have continued to use the name. But a news article isn't a legal brief, so it's hard to tell.
So to answer your question: the word "stealth" has been around forever, but trademarks don't apply only to made-up words. You can take a common word and trademark it for your application, which allows you to keep other people from muscling in on your good idea by confusing people with a similarly-named product. It's the sort of thing that would be accomplished by politeness if you could depend on that. For everything else, there are lawyers.
Re:Northrop Grumman stalemate? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I create the trademark "Quropiwla", which is a freely invented word, then I'm going to have a fair chanse demonstrating that anyone using that word does it in the intention of creating confusion with my product -- afterall, what other reason could there be ? It's unlikely someone would end up with that word by chance, and the word doesn't have any meaning as such.
If, on the other hand I register "Enjoyable" in the market for computer-input-devices (say I market joysticks) then it's not that obvious that others using this word does so in order to create confusion with my product. I'd probably still be able to stop other "Enjoyable" joysticks, but I doubt I'd have a case against say the "Enjoyable" computer-monitor.
Re:Northrop Grumman stalemate? (Score:5, Funny)
And you'll be hearing from ours shortly. Thanks.
Mastercard Legal Department.
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
"how can he get the rights for a word that is in PUBLIC DOMAIN?"
In the same way that the names "Tide" and "Crest" are trademarked. Next time you're at the supermarket, take note of how many products take their names from words in the dictionary.
This isn't endemic to stuff you'll find at your grocer's. Computer companies have successfully trademarked the words "sun" and "apple," too.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Infringement!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's not infringement. This page [harvard.edu] explains the concepts of fair use and nominative use as they apply to trademark law.
Re:Stealth (Score:3, Funny)
SHUT UP!
Bloody vikings.