Every advanced math paper ever written now infringes

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This guy's copyright.

 

It is bad enough that the law is grey, with long ears and eats grass.  We don't need fools in government agencies as well.

[hym 358]

It is my understanding that the Greek letter Pi wasn't copyrighted, but rather, the letter Pi plus a period after it.

 

The dispute is that a lot of the shirts use designs that are too close to the copyrighted symbol.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I find this ironically funny. Maybe, the US patent office can remove all senseless patents and prevent companies from issuing cease and desist letters to other companies that used the patterns first. The US patent office already does not recognize international patents and European Geographical Indications but enforces them most everywhere (besides China and other less developed countries).

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

and what about the expression 0 = 1 + e^iπ.

 

This is surely an infringement.

[hym 358]

and what about the expression 0 = 1 + e^iπ.

 

This is surely an infringement.

 

Euler's identity is not typically expressed with a period following the Pi symbol.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I usually read it written as e^iπ + 1 = 0

 

Also, Tropico 5 makes a joke about patenting Hot Water.

 

--Ocram

[Easy Bakes 253]

Didnt amazon copy right photographing using a white back ground?

[Duke87 1,070]

I dunno, but Amazon does have a patent on downloading something with only one click.

 

The basic problem is that the USPTO doesn't really investigate "prior art" when granting patents and trademarks. The submitter need only demonstrate that the work is theirs. So, when this dude applied for a trademark for "π.", they had to grant it since they had no grounds to deny it. The way the standard process works, it falls on the shoulders of someone being sued for infringement to countersue and prove that the holder was not the first person to come up with the patented/trademarked item.

 

i.e., all patent/trademark applications are presumed legitimate until proven illegitimate in court. This protects artists and inventors but in recent years people have discovered you can also use it to make money by being a troll. (relevant comic)

[LexusInfernus 908]

Well, even then the patent office should have known that this guy was using a mathematical symbol that has been around for centuries and that he is definitely not the original creator or inventor of it. They should have told him to go f himself. 

 

And he is also trying to patent I <3 . Isn't there are a rule that says you can't patent common phrases? 

 

Oh well, lets see how well this goes over if he actually starts to sue people for using Pi as a design on their shirt. Even if he wins in court, the internet will destroy him. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

 

and what about the expression 0 = 1 + e^iπ.

 

This is surely an infringement.

 

Euler's identity is not typically expressed with a period following the Pi symbol.

 

The period is the grammatical end of the sentence.  And since it is an equation, it can be expressed in either form.

[krbe 193]

This guy's copyright.

 

It is bad enough that the law is grey, with long ears and eats grass.  We don't need fools in government agencies as well.

 

The copyright law here is very clear. π. is not an original work of this guy (and if it were, it would not exceed the incredibly low threshold for copyright anyway), and hence is not his until he die and the next 50/70 years.

 

It is my understanding that the Greek letter Pi wasn't copyrighted, but rather, the letter Pi plus a period after it.

 

The dispute is that a lot of the shirts use designs that are too close to the copyrighted symbol.

 

The application is for π. indeed. Sending a cease and desist letter only requires affixing a fancy law degree after the name of the sender. You could know jack about industrial property.

 

A trademark is a guarantee of origin and manufacture. To infringe on a trademark you can either have an identical trademark - a name or visually - or one that looks like it. The question is settled by the average consumer. If you go to this shop, would you choose a pi-print and risk believing that you bought one off the π. line? Look at this way: Would you buy this shirt  and then believe you bought a Lacoste shirt?

 

Here I see two problems for Pi Productions (or should that be π παραγωγές?): These are patterns, not trademarks; and these are self prints. A guy got a π+e={pie-graphic} pulled. That makes no sense -- how would the consumer be able to mistake a sweater with a print like that for another manufacturer's goods, which may or may not affix huge pi-symbols and a full stop across the chest of their products?

 

The fact that these are self prints, makes it easy for the shop to pull the goods. There is no trademark (and hence no value) for the shop to defend the pi on its own, so it makes sound business sense just denying the pi sign.

 

Had this been in Europe, the trademark would probably have been denied community wide protection due to non-distinctivness, consisting only of a letter of a commonly used alphabet. The guy could trademark his line in the 27(+3) countries if he so wished; yet due to Community legislation and the unity of the internal market you could by any kind of pi-pattern from Greece - including those with full stops.

 

 

I find this ironically funny. Maybe, the US patent office can remove all senseless patents and prevent companies from issuing cease and desist letters to other companies that used the patterns first. The US patent office already does not recognize international patents and European Geographical Indications but enforces them most everywhere (besides China and other less developed countries).

--Ocram

 

There is no such thing as a international patents. The closest you get is the European patent, which, perhaps surprisingly, only covers Europe. The USPTO cannot enforce anything anywhere. Patent owners and trademark proprietors may challenge misuse abroad where they have registered, of course. 

 

When it comes to Geographical Indicators, it should be noted that in the absence of a free trade agreement and enormous regulations it makes little sense for Europeans to pursue protection in America and vice versa. The blue and red circles already serve the purpose - if you would put those, or similar marks on non-protected foodstuffs with the same name as those protected in Europe you would probably violate some marketing regulations.

 

and what about the expression 0 = 1 + e^iπ.

 

This is surely an infringement.

 

Trademarks must be registered in certain classes (the Nice classification system). If you would like to use the π. for postal services or medical equipment, you are free to register it for that.

 

I dunno, but Amazon does have a patent on downloading something with only one click.

 

The basic problem is that the USPTO doesn't really investigate "prior art" when granting patents and trademarks. The submitter need only demonstrate that the work is theirs. So, when this dude applied for a trademark for "π.", they had to grant it since they had no grounds to deny it. The way the standard process works, it falls on the shoulders of someone being sued for infringement to countersue and prove that the holder was not the first person to come up with the patented/trademarked item.

 

i.e., all patent/trademark applications are presumed legitimate until proven illegitimate in court. This protects artists and inventors but in recent years people have discovered you can also use it to make money by being a troll. (relevant comic)

 

Within the software patents there are amazingly low quality on many patents granted.In particular many of them seem to seem not to involve an inventive step (obviousness) -- i.e. is this something a "person skilled in the art" could derive and make from logic -- for example by altering some code to make a new software instance or process of an already running program in a tab instead of a separate window? Or to change the encoding used in domain naming from ANSI to UTF-8? (relevant examples)

 

And you're absolutely right about state of the art / prior art. The USPTO's backlog is now measured with seven digits, and the European system isn't much better. Good for those who want to protect their inventions (since a prior filed patent application invalidates a similar one filed later -- and patents are protected from filing date, not grant date), since it make the market place really muddy. I read somewhere that American examiners have some eight hours to examine an application -- and yet it may take years before the patent is granted. Solution? Bog your application down with information and numerous references, so the examiner is sure to miss something. They're not "preseumed legitimate" but the system is broken. If you want to turn down an application, you have to support your refusal, and this makes it easier to accept the application, publish it and let the private businesses fix it in the opposition period or as an expensive infringement case.

 

Fun fact: Years ago Apple sued Samsung in Germany over allegedly infringing on a "dog ear" for unlock mechanism for tablets. How this idea -- which is essentially just another variation over slide-to-unlock-move, operating perfectly well within the well-known boundaries of the OS (which should be considered prior art in itself...) even passed the examiner is not relevant here, because the court discovered that Steve Jobs had demonstrated this at a public conference; hence someone "skilled in the art" could (probably extremely easily) replicate the function. Thus the dog ear was not something new that Apple tried to claim infringment on. (Ever seen the blue flash when you scroll to the end of a list in Android? Yeah, that's because Apple has "bounce-back" patent for end-of-list-actions...)

 

Well, even then the patent office should have known that this guy was using a mathematical symbol that has been around for centuries and that he is definitely not the original creator or inventor of it. They should have told him to go f himself. 

 

And he is also trying to patent I <3 . Isn't there are a rule that says you can't patent common phrases? 

 

Oh well, lets see how well this goes over if he actually starts to sue people for using Pi as a design on their shirt. Even if he wins in court, the internet will destroy him. 

 

Yes, there's a rule that says you can't patent common phrase. It's called subject matter, and a common phrase is not an invention, not a product, not a process, not novel, not inventive and not industrially applicable. If you're thinking about trademarks, there are rules prohibiting using ordinary words for ordinary uses. Using ordinary words for extraordinary uses (such as Apple for computers or records) is perfectly OK.

[Beren Erchamion 12]

It's a trademark, not a copyright.  Use of a trademarked term or expression is only infringing in a very few highly specific cases, almost all of which have to do with using that term or expression to market a commercial service or product.

 

Furthermore, the trademark is not in the symbol in the abstract but with a specific stylistic depiction of it.  The trademark is perfectly legitimate and not at all "OMG IF I CALCULATE THE AREA OF A CIRCLE I'LL GO TO JAIL OMG!"

 

The guy's lawyer can cease-and-desist all he wants, but Jez Kemp's comments in the article are spot-on.  Whether Zazzle stands up to it or not is up to them based on how much of a hassle they want to put up with, but the problem isn't "fools in government agencies."