Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web | Hacker News Reader

Artist trademarks 'Pi' symbol, enrages the web

cbc.ca

71 pointsadeaver26 comments

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 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.

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.

I think the trademark office needs some reform as well. As I understand the process of an application first involves a search to check that the term hasn't been trademarked before or that very similar trademarks don't exist - not to check whether the term has been used before. The trademark is then "published for opposition" in the weekly trademark office Gazette, at which point anyone who believes they may incur damages from the trademark being granted (people selling "I love π." t-shirts) should contact the trademark office. In this case, the application can be seen on page 893 [0].

If I am selling something do I have to hire someone to check this every week to ensure someone doesn't file a trademark for any terms I have used? There is also the same thing for patents.

[0] http://www.uspto.gov/web/trademarks/tmog/20131112_OG.pdf

> Any word or symbol that identifies a source of goods can be a trademark

This is not exactly like Apple I think.

This is about printing texts on T-shirt. It is only a small step further from printing texts on a white paper.

Moreover it is about printing a letter in the Greek alphabet that also happens to be a common mathematical symbol.

I can see maybe if the trademark was about very specific font and color combined. They anyone else could just pick a different font. It doesn't seem to like that.

This is NOT about printing texts on a Tshirt. It is about a company trying to brand itself as "pi." (why they would want to do that is beyond me) JUST like Apple branded itself as "Apple" This company will make clothing apparel. This does NOT stop anyone else from putting the symbol pi on a tshirt. You just can't do it in a way that makes it look like you are the "pi." company.

Generally I think it's a sort of two-step the patent/trademark trolls do. They go to USPTO and apply for IP based around a narrow reading of their application, and then they attempt to enforce based on a broad reading of their IP once they have it.

The narrow case here (that a trademark can be "pi" plus some additional character) is not super far-fetched (though maybe the period isn't enough). But then the broad case (that anything using "pi" infringes) is the excessive bit. It may have appeared totally clear to the guy granting the trademark that "pi dot" wouldn't grant any claims to "pi", but its not clear to enforcement authorities.

This is compounded by this sort of stuff almost never seeing the inside of a courtroom. Patent trolls push for settlement so they never have to litigate their broad claims on their patent, and they can move against trademarks with a cease-and-desist or DMCA claim, which basically every company folds to without reading, on the advice of their lawyers.

It 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.

Imagine if all math books in future will have to include a footnote saying: "All greek letters' trademarks are property of their respective owners" :)

A is for Apple™...

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...

ESPECIALLY when the C&D talked about copyright infringement.

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

>Yes and yes.

That's all I needed to hear. Trademarking 'pi' is therefore nothing more than exactly this.

There's therefore no need to rage out.

I wish newegg would bait this guy with a pi-themed sale or event.

What kind of artist is he? It looks to me he's a con artist.

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?

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...

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!

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.

I <3 this guy's next attempt.

http://www.trademarks411.com/marks/85481027-i-lt-3

For the record, I don't.

A dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7827524.

π.

Money, please.

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