Jackbooted Trademark Enforcement for Dummies.

May 7, 2000 3:54 PM

Jackbooted Trademark Enforcement for Dummies. Slashdot is carrying pointers to several incidences of overzealous lawyering by IDG books; there was also a pointer to a reply letter that, basically, tells IDG to go stick it, and why they have no choice.
posted by baylink (3 comments total)

1st of all I agree that IDG is out of line here. It seems like fair use to me. But this instance is much harder to pigeonhole. The original item that IDG objected to was the use of their trademarked phrase in the title of a published article. It wasn't parody or satire.

Reading through everything, I see IDG being rather polite and Octopod being rather childish. I see fouls on both sides.

But it sure looks like fair use to me.

I think this is one of those cases where the lawyers will have to beat each other up over the finer points. While it looks pretty silly to me, we DO need some sort of copyright law.
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:03 PM on May 7, 2000

I have perused this thread and found it very interesting and educational. Unfortunately, it is entitled "Jackbooted Trademark Enforcement for Dummies", which is confusingly similar to ....

(Don't laugh, one of the IDG-affected sites was a discussion thread.)
posted by dhartung at 3:28 PM on May 8, 2000

No, Dan; I was *praying* someone would go there...

Thank You.
posted by baylink at 7:45 PM on May 8, 2000