Judge Denies TigerDirect's Request for Injunction 378
wallykeyster writes "As predicted in previous discussions the judge has ruled against TigerDirect's request for injunction to prevent Apple from using 'Tiger' in their advertising." I heard that both people who still held respect for TigerDirect no longer do.
Does that mean... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Only if you say it indirectly.
Re:Does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:2)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:5, Funny)
My neighbor used to call me the same thing, until I stopped leaping out of the bushes in his front yard and scratching at his face.
Re:Does that mean... (Score:3, Funny)
How old are you and what dimension are you from? As a child, this now 80 year old man lived next to you and that was in 1974?
Oh, wait. I parsed the sentence wrong, didn't I?
80 year old man ... used to call me "Tiger" (Score:3, Funny)
Chris: It's this girl. I can't talk to her. It's like girls are a different species or something.
Old Man: Who needs them? You like Popsicles?
Chris: Well, sure.
Old Man: Then you need to come on down to the cellar. I got a whole freezer full of Popsicles.
Chris: No, thanks. I gotta get going.
Old Man: Don't make me beg now.
Chris: You're funny. Bye.
Old Man: Get your fat ass back here.
Re:Does that mean... (Score:3, Funny)
So... (Score:4, Funny)
They still have a shot. (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, they are being sued themselves by T-Com ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They still have a shot. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They still have a shot. (Score:3, Funny)
This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:2)
and the request for an injunction was just for the fun of it.
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically enough, a percentage of German gold was actually stolen from displaced/killed Jews and other countries that Germany had conquered. Tons of that gold made it back to New York where it was re-pressed with the Federal Seal, thereby making it US money. Through following paper trails and lots of hunting, Jewish advocacy groups located much of their own gold and the US government was forced to pay them back, with interest. This all happened very recently (the payback itself).
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:5, Interesting)
All in all, it seems that the people who profited from the massive looting are not the looters themselves, at least as far as physical things are concerned. The intellectual property (what an ugly word) theft, however... Hmm, didn't Microsoft just start this contest where people make movies about "Thought Thieves"? This sounds like the perfect topic for an entry.
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it theft? Sounds like the spoils of war.
And don't forget -- this is Slashdot where it's not politically correct to say intellectual property can be stolen. Otherwise people might have to pay for their music.
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:3, Informative)
Ironically enough, a percentage of German gold was actually stolen from displaced/killed Jews and other countries that Germany had conquered. Tons of that gold made it back to New York where it was re-pressed with the Federal Seal, thereby making it US money.
This story is highly unlikely. There were two international conferences, one in 1997 and one in 1998, on the disposition of Nazi gold. As this CNN report [cnn.com] on the first conference shows, the U.S.'s objective was always to return the gold to its rightfu
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:4, Informative)
You're citing John Nugent? John Fucking Nugent? Delusional white-supremacist holocaust-revisionist John Fucking Nugent? America belongs to the whites because europeans were here before the indians John Fucking Nugent?
...", did you ever consider books?
Oh, and this is really your lucky day. You really hit the jackpot. One side of my family was exterminated in concentration camps, and you're citing a delusional holocaust-hoaxist.
For your sake I really hope you had no idea that you were reading and citing that sort of psycho. That libertyforum.org seems to be crawling with an appalling number of borderline neo-nazis. Not everyone there of course, but a very very ugly subgroup.
On the bright side I did get a chuckle out your link of when he explained that all of the UFO sightings since World War II were due to the magical futuristic stolen German inventions we never found out about. Not merely a holocaust denier, but a UFO conspiracy theorist to boot. That's just icing on the psycho-cake.
Oh and not to nitpick, but you should attend your English classes. I before E except after C would teach you that it's 'piece' not 'peice'.
Hmmm, lets review the "ei" words from my post. There was 'their' 'peice' and 'neither'. Ok, I botched 'peice'. However if your "English class" is the worthless I before E except after C you're going to be misspelling 'their' and 'neither'. I before E except after C except when pronounced as "A" and in neighbor and weigh, except science and species, except in pluralized 'cy' such as frequencies and vacancies, except in neither and either and eight and foreign and dreidel, and most of all in my daily caffeine. And on and on. But enough with the grammar Nazism, as if we didn't have enough Nazism with John Nugent already.
---
When you said, "Things like copyrights and patents
Well I dunno... "things like copyrights"... books... "things like copyrights"... books...
Hmmm. There might just be a connection there.
You believe in physical property rights but not intellectual property rights?
There are property rights.
There are copyrights.
There are patents.
There are trademarks.
Good and useful things. Only one of them is property rights.
The term "intellectual property" is a misnomer, and it is an extremely harmful misnomer. Copyrights are different than property rights and they are SUPPOSED to be different than property rights because information is different than property. When someone starts thinking or talking "intellectual property" they almost inevitably misunderstand what the law actually says, and they almost inevitable try to "fix" the law to become what they *thought* it was supposed to say.
Do you think that books also should not be copyrighted because they are just made up of words in different order?
As I said, copyrights can be a good and useful thing. However it is important to understand what the law actually says and what the law is actually supposed to be and what it is supposed to do.
To some people the following is going to sound like an attack on copyright. It's not. It is a defense of good old traditional copyright. It is merely an attack on a "backwards" view of copyright.
The Constitution grants congress the power to promote progress if they choose to do so. If congress did not choose to exercise this power then there would be no copyrights at all. The initial state is that the public has all rights to do whatever they please with information. To the extent information itself is "property" it is fundamentally public property.
If congress does choose to promote progress, the constitution grants a means of doing so. Congress may secure certain limited rights from the public and temporarily grant them exclusively to the author or inventor. A government granted limited monopoly. Th
Re:This is not personal. They have to protect it. (Score:3, Informative)
From TFA "... evidence of over 200 federal registrations of marks containing the term "Tiger" -- including 24 companies, other than TigerDirect, which employ Tiger marks to promote computer products and services."
So will these 200 companies lose their marks because they didn't challenge the 201st?
It has to be a similar product with a similar mark, the
Watch Out... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Watch Out... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Watch Out... (Score:4, Funny)
Telling the difference between the two (Score:5, Funny)
Need proof? Look at the shiny polished Slashdot logo at the top. When was the last time you looked at that and thought "Oh, I'm in the TigerDirect section of Slashdot!"
Re:Telling the difference between the two (Score:2)
Anyway, use the usual way to deal with people like that. If enough slashdot users don't ever do business with them, then hopefully they'll learn, and maybe it'll set an example.
Re:Telling the difference between the two (Score:2)
They have also been known to use their legal eagles as bullies.
It's good to see that what comes around, goes around.
Re:Telling the difference between the two (Score:4, Funny)
This is dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of words in the English language, however, remains the same.
Just a namespace collision isn't evidence of trademark infringement. That requires (or should require -- I gave up on learning the details of IP law once I realized that it made no sense) one company to choose their name specifically to leech off another successful name.
Tigerdirect has been around since before Apple picked the name Tiger.
Apple wouldn't want anything to be named after such a shitty company.
So what's the deal?
Re:This is dumb. (Score:5, Interesting)
So TigerDirect revealed themselves as a bunch of jackasses, and the courts worked as they're supposed to. Yay!
Re:This is dumb. (Score:5, Informative)
A company that has an already common word as part of their company name is upset because another company uses the same already common word as part of the name of one of their products. Oh God, the world is coming to an end! Between Tiger Direct, OS 10.4 Tiger, the approximately 6 bazillion sports teams named the Tigers, a dominate golfer named Tiger, oh and some stupid animal using the name too...I don't think I can function anymore, my brain is overloaded!
Besides. Apple announced their product as Tiger a long time ago. Then TigerDirect decides to make a big deal of it right before it's about to ship? The timing seems awfully suspect to me. Must be because I'm an Apple simpleton.
Re:This is dumb. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is dumb. (Score:5, Funny)
The English language is evolving.com all the time, and new words are addendumated every year into the lexicolon.
Re:This is dumb. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is dumb. (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't words come out of the lexicolon?
Re:This is dumb. (Score:4, Funny)
The English language is evolving.com all the time, and new words are addendumated every year into the lexicolon.
Re:This is dumb. (Score:5, Funny)
I know you were joking, but this is seriously the best word ever. We can use it for the entire vocabulary of horribly abused words on the Internet and cell phones.
Re:This is dumb. (Score:2)
The number of words in the English language, however, remains the same.
Actually no. Before 1993 had anyone ever heard of the word pentium? Athlon and Opteron certainly weren't english words before AMD created them.
The problem you describe in your first sentence is exactly the reason why large companies go to extreme lengths to create a new word solely associated with their product. Pharmeceutical companies have done this exact same thing for every new drug for probbably 100 years.
That doesn't mean
Re:This is dumb. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, English is acquiring new words at a fast pace, probably thousands per year. Even the staid Oxford Dictionary [askoxford.com] records many new words in each edition.
I have mod points (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I have mod points (Score:5, Funny)
In your hosts file.
Something like this should suit you nicely
64.236.24.28 slashdot.org
Re:I have mod points (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have mod points (Score:2)
Re:I have mod points (Score:2)
personly it gave me a good chuckle (+3 funny)
The nature of slashdot really allows us to put our views down on the story in words as opposed to numbers
I found the story intresting as its good to see that atleast some trivial time-wasting lawsuits go down the pan.
Though your post raised an intresting point on should slashdot storys be subject to moderation.
It would be great if they were , it would allow us to filter storys even further.
I wouldn't take Cowboyneils comments to heart t
Re:I have mod points (Score:2)
Nonetheless, as a service to those with an interest, I offer the following (which the editors chose not to post):
11 May 2005: Bruce Perens, owner of Technocrat.net, a site based on the Slashdot model and running the same open source Slashcode http://www.slashcode.com/ [slashcode.com], has shut down the site, citing declining readership and lower than expected growth. Sometimes touted as "a more ma
What the future holds (Score:2, Insightful)
TigerDirect ads (Score:2, Funny)
I'm sure there's some witty comment I could be making here, but I have no idea what it is.
I never bough from TigerDirect, and now.... (Score:2, Insightful)
In a society run by lawyers, no one seems to get along.
GJC
Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
blah blah blah... (Score:5, Insightful)
From my dealing of people who put TigerDirect first on their lists I doubt that many of the TigerDirect customer base give a damn about either Apple or Geek politics. Let's not take ourselves too seriously here.
Wonder what would happen if I created AppleDirect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wonder what would happen if I created AppleDire (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wonder what would happen if I created AppleDire (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wonder what would happen if I created AppleDire (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait... Apple...
Way to put salt in my wounds. (Score:2)
Now here comes Slashdot yelling "Tiger Tiger Tiger" at me.
they got two things out of this (Score:5, Interesting)
2) The precedent of defending their trademark. So if another catalog retailer ever comes along with a name that really does infringe, they can't say that TigerDirect failed to protect their TM.
Editorial (Score:2, Interesting)
That's right, CowboyNeal, say what everyone wants to hear. It'll drive up the ad revenue.
TigerDirect's behavior... (Score:2)
(No insult intended to the many decent folk and businesses that are down there, but your situation's akin to your IP addresses being located in a block infested by spammers.)
Difficulty at the gas pump (Score:4, Funny)
I was at an Esso [adslogans.co.uk] gas station the other day and everyone was trying to force a copy of Apple's Tiger installer disk into their gas tanks.
Tiger,tiger burning bright (Score:5, Funny)
What immortal hand or eye
Protects thy brand integrity?
Under India's burning skies
IP issues do not rise
If you've passed on being shot
You still can't sue the goddam lot
Genus felis does not code
Nor shifts boxes by the load
Salesmen in expensive shirts
Don't care if your image hurts
Tiger,tiger burning bright
In the forests of the night
Though extinction faces you
It faces all those brand-names, too
With sincere apologies to William Blake.
suing apple is fashionable (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has a tendency to entertain the lawsuits, so every corporate lawyer thinks its a great make-work type project.
Marketing types agree, because its free advertising.
Even individuals, like Carl "Butthead Astronomer" Sagan love to sue Apple over the use of internal project code names, because suing Apple is both fun and profitable.
Apple should have learned by now that using any word in the english language can result in a lawsuit, just like George Lucas has learned he can be sued by any writer thinking they own the notion of a hairy cute alien.
Maybe Apple should start using H4xx0r for its project naming. Tiger could be T1gg3r, but then they'd probably be sued by Disney (who, btw, totally screwed the estate of Milne out of millions.)
In other news, (Score:4, Insightful)
I used Tigerdirect.ca once for buying a Rio Karma. Never again. About a month after buying my Karma (20G HD mp3 player) it broke (nothing against td). So I call Tigerdirect for warranty information.
First of all, they changed their website so that it no longer advertised the 1 year warranty I saw when I purchased the player and changed it to 90 days (the same as the manufacturer's warranty), and disavowed any knowledge of this mythical 1 year warranty (one of the reasons I picked TD over others). They just tried to refer me back to the manufacturer.
So finally I say fine, take the 1-800 phone number.
Phone number doesn't work in Canada. The web page did say
So yeah, the toll free number doesn't work.
I call back Tigerdirect. Complain that the number they gave me doesn't work in Canada. So the buddy tells me that they'll get in touch with me about it.
That was a year and a fucking half ago. I still never heard back. Ultimately, after a week of waiting, I went to Rio's site, and after extensive digging I finally found a number in Toronto I could call. So I call Rio directly, they honour the warranty and in two months (ugh) I have a refurbished player. That one lasted a year (never buy Rio hard drive players, they suck. There's a reason iPods are more expensive).
Tigerdirect is a horrible company that is out there for the same reasons microsoft is: Make a cheap buck out of people who don't know any better.
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right.
Pardon? What intellectual property? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pardon? What intellectual property? (Score:3, Funny)
Not that sort of tiger?
Re:Pardon? What intellectual property? (Score:2)
You mean common words like apple and windows?
Re:Pardon? What intellectual property? (Score:2)
Re:Pardon? What intellectual property? (Score:2)
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:2, Interesting)
When Apple deliberately prevent competing operating systems from working, I'll have my doubts. Microsoft, on the other hand, have been less than welcoming to competition in the past - remember the DR-DOS and Windows 3.1 incompatibility?
Apple make their own computers and are well within their rights to ship their own OS. Microsoft, on the other hand, forces OEMs to ship Windows, and uses decidedly underhand techniques to ensure their OS prevails.
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:2)
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:3, Interesting)
In effect, they forced Apple hardware users to use their OS, in a time period when a significant part of the 'leading' mindshare was defecting.
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:2)
No one is saying MS should be forced to offer X-box'es with linux preinstalled. They can ship them with whatever they like, they're manufacturing them and selling them. But when they tell Dell that ever
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:3, Informative)
"It is technically possible for a manufacturer to install any number of operating systems on a computer. The user then has to choose which operating system to use during the boot process (after switching on the machine). However, Microsoft OEMs are only allowed to install Windows. No machines with both Windows and, for example, the free (!) operating system Linux, can legally be sold by OEMs."
Doesn't sound especially fair to anyone but Microsoft, that. Rem
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:2)
Then it went a step further. So Dell is putting windows on all their machines. Then MS says, you can't include netscape either, even if it runs on top of Windows. You have to use our browser only. And if you do
Re:Even the judiciary loves Apple. (Score:3, Insightful)
You asked for a dual-booting machine. Don't move the goalposts.
In any case, it is not the same. When you buy a computer from Apple, you are getting just that - an Apple. Apple have the right to ship whatever they want with their own computers. If Microsoft made a PC, they'd be allowed to ship Windows with it no matter what.
The problem is that other companies, building their own computers, are being forced to ship nothing but Windows - or they get no Windows at all. Now, if Apple forced other companies who
Re:Unnecessary comments (Score:5, Insightful)
But this one at least made me smile. Lighten up. It's their website, not yours. They've been adding commentary like this for years, most of it's dumb, sure, but that's how the world works.
Re:Unnecessary comments (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Unnecessary comments (Score:4, Insightful)
*Man* do we need a "Haha you're new here" moderation for these kinda comments. This isn't a journalism site -- it's an entertainment and discussion site. I damn well *expect* there to be snide partisan commentary from the editors (a poorly-chosen job title, but oh well -- deal with it).
Re:I look forward to the day... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah: imagine a dictionary full of (C)s and (R)s:
Tigers(C) (Panthera tigris(R)) are mammals of the Felidae(TM) family, one of four "big cats"(R)(C) that belong to the Panthera(R) genus. Tigers(R) are "predatory carnivores"(TM)
Re:I look forward to the day... (Score:2)
Re:I look forward to the day... (Score:3, Funny)
You did not properly tag all of the existing trademarks you used. All of the following can be verified at the US Patent and Trademark website. [uspto.gov]
Panthera: serial number 78308042
Are: serial number 76529298
Mammal: serial number 75769435
Of: serial number 76165824
The: serial number 75726394
Family: serial number 78410485
One: serial numb
Re:No respect (Score:3)
Yeah, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is your point?
AFAICT, Tiger Direct does not market an operating system under their name, and it seems quite obvious that Apple is not using the word "Direct" in any of their marketing or naming strategies.
Again I ask, what exactly is your point?
Trademarks only reach so far, and Tiger Direct's does not (rightly IMHO) reach far enough. Next thing you know, African tour operators will be trying to sue Apple over the name of their browser, the French will be trying to sue Apple over their chosen name for autoconfig, mathemeticians and philosophers the world over will be trying to sue Apple over the name of their (bought out) music software, auto makers will be suing them over the use of the term "dashboard", etc. etc. etc.
Trademarks only go so far.
Re:Beware TigerDirect (Score:2)
Mod a troll.
Re:Beware TigerDirect (Score:2)
Re:Beware TigerDirect (Score:4, Informative)
You will never be asked your SS number, or any part of your SS number if you are not applying to purchase on credit from them.
Uh, no. That was Exxon. (Score:2)
Re:Bye Bye (Score:2)
Surprise! All that "bad press" you speak off is free brand exposure.
Re:Bye Bye (Score:3, Interesting)
Bin Laden is even better known... but not good for his 'brand'.
I dunno, did you ever see the episode of TV Nation [imdb.com] with the segment called "Direct Mail"? Moore sent out two letter campaigns asking for money. One for "friends of Jeffery Dahmer" and one for an average young couple just trying to make ends meet. If you can't guess who got more money, you'll have to watch the show to find out.
Re:TigerDirect in the Wrong? (Score:2, Informative)
However you can get a trademark on a image mark, which could include a common word, but it will also be accompanied by the font used, other graphic elements and the colors used.
Re:TigerDirect in the Wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case, it was probably more expedient for Apple to settle as the laws in other countries are different than US laws. Companies run into problems like this when selling overseas.
TigerDirect has a pretty good case here. Apple is using a name they used before Apple in the same industry.
It would different if Apple used "TigerDirect" for the code name of their OS but they used a common English word. For example, in the case of MS, US courts have ruled that you can't claim a common word (Windows) but you can claim distinct combinations of common words and letters (Windows 95, Windows Me). Also adding the company name also makes it distinct.
Could I come out with an operating system called OS X? Apple doesn't have anything called OS X, but they do have a Mac OS X.
Microware sued Apple over OS 9. It had a real-time OS on PowerPC embedded systems called OS-9. After a few years, a judge ruled that since both companies occuped different markets, it was unlikely that a consumer would be confused. In your case, if you wrote an OS for personal computers called OS X, I think Apple would have a case.
this is one of those cases where Apple just didn't do their research.
And you know that how? Again "Tiger" is a common word. TigerDirect does not own "Tiger" but combinations of "Tiger" and other words. There are 200 trademarks containing "Tiger" but no OS named "Tiger". I think they did their research.
Re:TigerDirect in the Wrong? (Score:2, Informative)
Try starting at OS I, then OS II... eventually OS IX then OS X. I distinctly remember something in US IP history that says you can't protect a number. X is just another number - I was going to say "just not in the common numerical system, then I realised that one place that system is commonly used is legal documents. Long story short, go ahead, market an Operating System X - just make sure you lead up to it appropriately.
Re:Marketing budget (Score:2)
Safari and the BSD layer of OS X are just about the only things of any significance that have roots in open source. But even for those, just about *ALL* the new code that ends up in OS X in those, is being done by Apple's own engineers.
Re:Marketing budget (Score:4, Informative)
And while gcc and mach are significant, they are proportionally very small parts of OS X, and they could be replaced by something else. There are certainly other compilers out there than gcc - betters ones too - and there are certainly other kernels too. I mean, Apple could have potentially licensed the Solaris or BeOS kernels, maybe QNX, or whatever else. Hell, perhaps even WinCE or something. There *ARE* options. Some are better than others, of course. But to say that there would be no Apple without FOSS, and especially to suggest that 10.4 is largely developed by the open source community, well, that's just bull.