Spring tears down math geek t-shirt listing because it dared to mention the trademarked word 'zeta' On Tuesday, Tariq Rashid, a UK-based data scientist and author, tried to create a t-shirt design using on-demand print shop Spring to celebrate the Riemann zeta function, which is widely known among mathematicians and technical types. "I thought I'd create a t-shirt of the function as it looks cool and is pretty famous," …
> Affinity Consultants, based in Carlsbad, California, for more than two decades has been coordinating trademark licensing oversight for various Greek-lettered organizations – fraternities and sororities ...
> The Register spoke to a trademark coordinator at Affinity Consultants, who wished to be identified simply as Brett.
Presumably along with his paralegal Chuck and their assistant Todd.
Carlsbad CA is a high rent zone where a lot of businesses might want to locate for "image" reasons. It's a little bit like being located in Palo Alto. Not saying "snooty" or anything because it's not THAT bad, but still I think there's at least a _little_ bit of that.
Anyway, having a L_[aw]_Y_E_R office there that (allegedly) TRADEMARKS THE GREEK ALPHABET doesn't surprise me at all...
Icon, because, FACEPALM
I'm sorry, if there is anything that is more public domain than the Greek alphabet, please inform me.
This really is an example of trademarks gone mad. Who the hell got custody of the Greek alphabet and under what authority ?
That needs to be revoked immediately.
With prejudice if necessary.
Spring’s legal team is spreading the manure thick. Only certain combinations of Greek letters (and their English names) are trademarked in the US for the specific purpose of identifying specific fraternity and sorority organizations — e.g. “ΔΓ” and “Delta Gamma” are trademarks that identify the Delta Gamma Fraternity, but no one holds (or could hold) a universal trademark on any of “Δ”, “Γ”, “Delta”, or “Gamma”.
In the particular case of Spring’s braindead filter reacting to “zeta” in the descriptive text, one workaround could be to use the Greek name for the Greek letter instead — either “ζήτα” (monotonic) or “ζῆτα” (polytonic).
RTFM. They don't have a trademark on the Greek Alphabet, and as quoted, they often have issues with companies "asserting their copyright on their behalf", which they don't claim to have.
It's the t-shirt shop and others that are in the wrong, not the company that manages the names of US College groups.
As for this case, I'd have taken my business to another T-shirt shop, rather than capitulate.
We don't know exactly what trademark they're asserting, nor how they describe it to retailers. But if they didn't make it crystal clear that only specific, enumerable combinations of Greek letters are covered - and those only in specific contexts - they are absolutely to blame.
Again, RTFA:
"The Register spoke to a trademark coordinator at Affinity Consultants, who wished to be identified simply as Brett. He acknowledged that commerce platforms have problems policing trademarked material.
"We work with Amazon too," Brett said. "They have been having difficulty with enforcement." He added that Affinity tries to educate companies about how to respond to trademark concerns, but cannot control how they do it."
Or, read their own FAQ:
What are the organization's trademarks?A
The trademarks include the organization's name, nicknames, Greek letters, crest, badge, symbols, and other insignia. Any and all commercial use of these marks (or any marks that are confusingly similar) must be granted through a license agreement.
QHow can the letters of an alphabet be a trademark?
A
It has been long held that combinations of letters can be (and are) distinctive enough to be used as trademarks, similar to companies like IBM, AAA, KFC, etc. This has been consistently reinforced by federal courts.
QHow can a nickname or symbol be a trademark?
A
Since the organization has used the nickname and/or symbol consistently in conducting business for many years, they have the right to claim ownership of that mark within their channel of trade (fraternity and sorority members). A federal court recently reinforced the fact that nicknames and symbols are distinctive, protectable marks.
Delta Airlines - is a valid trademark
Delta Aviation Services - sufficiently similar to Delta Airlines that it would be protected
Delta Software - completely different line of business, and the trademark is owned by a completely different company. Judging by their website, the software they produce is indeed two steps removed from Beta in terms of stability, so their name is very appropriate.
Similarly, there are two separate and legal trademarks for the name "Cracker Barrel" in the US. One is owned by Kraft-Heinz as a brand name for a line of cheeses. The other (Cracker Barrel Old Country Store) is owned by a restaurant/store chain.
"I'd have taken my business to another T-shirt shop, rather than capitulate."
YES! When you see this kind of stupidity, vote with your wallet. I usually drop them an email and/or a good, old fashioned telephone call explaining why they did not get my business.
Why do you think it's inevitable? Sensible t-shirt printers don't filter on single words (much less letters) ... or if they do, they at least have a cognizant human vet the results so as not to lose business.
As for your alternative, screen printing your own shirts is quite doable in a spare bedroom/garage. It's actually quite profitable. Why do you think there are so many small companies doing it?
Sensible t-shirt printers can NOT operate on the scale that spring does. How do I know, I was there since the beginning and was there as all these systems were built at spring.
Traditional screen printing has a single design printed a bunch to be profitable where spring started to get into short run screen (10 units) which most screen shops would turn away as not profitable. This is exponentially easier to police.
Eventually the advances in digital printing allowed for this revolution of the short run high color count shirts that you see blasted all over social media now. Spring ripped out all its screens, and replaced them with state of the art digital printers. I use the word revolution because it was that, you could now profitably produce and sell digital goods that did not exist in the real world that only got produced on demand if a purchase was made. No storing and destroying unsold designs.
Now this created an even bigger problem of thousands of unique designs being uploaded every day. These designs in turn could get automatically uploaded to other marketplaces (amazon, walmart, ebay, wish, etc). How do you police that? They learn the hardway (See Teespring scandal's on wikipedia for some examples) -- its laughable at how offended this person in the article got at Teespring doing the correct thing of removing it followed by reinstating after a human evaluation. If you saw some of the awful hateful subtle things that gets through -- that also would have gotten through a screen operation.
Blanket keyword tagging isn't even the beginning to manage a self service upload platform with millions of designs. First layer of defense is keyword flagging. Second would be AI and Machine Learning to watch for infringing and trademark designs. Third would be a dual person trust and safety system manually swiping left or right for "OK" or "NO" on EVERY design. They literally built a TINDER for tshirts. Hell we even worked on systems to get headline feeds so the second a celebrity passed the trust&safety team could prevent people from 'profiting' on the death of someone.
I don't know what Teesprings volume is today, I'm sure I could make a call to find out but I'm proud of how far that company has come. To quote a stranger in an uber once called it to me reminiscing on the early days "The wild west of Teespring" to a company that has built and found a way to manage a user generated upload system at scale and invested heavily in technology, people, and process to keep the platform safe.
Again, who said anything about age? The question was if there was "anything that is more public domain than the Greek alphabet".
English is seen in more places than Greek, world-wide, without any compensation going to the authors. Ergo ...
> The English alphabet comes to mind ...
I didn't know there is an English alphabet, unless you mean the Shavian alphabet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet). But that is quite recent, not sure if it is in the public domain yet
Now the Latin alphabet certainly is in the public domain, even though it is not quite as old as the Greek one.
"I've just trademarked the Latin alphabet letter 'E', so please avoid using it in your communications otherwise my lawyers will be onto you for infringement of my Intellectual Property Rights."
How vεry darε you! Oncε I can afford somε, you'll bε hεaring from my lawyεrs with a vεry stεrn lεttεr!
In the UK there is the "i" newspaper.
I am also the proud owner of a lightweight aluminium trowel with retractable handle for digging small holes when trekking, called an ipood! (Did you see what they did there?)
Sadly Apple got in and you cannot get them with that name anymore.
"Did you see what they did there?"
Hard to miss it ... My neighbor's new twin sprog sport these occasionally:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/222473404073?hash=item33cc72bea9:g:GIUAAOSwB21c8sMS
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/264481022088?hash=item3d944c2088:g:oFUAAOSwF2hcnrSN
Has to be specific enough. Too broad and you get rejected. Ask Thrifty Rental Car, who (for lack of a better description) tried to service mark (like a trademark but for service companies) the color blue:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15159379864415021322
With the added complication of the defendant not being legally allowed to call themselves "defendant" or refer to their "lawyers" due to the e's. Very nice. I'd love to see the legal response that carefully avoids the letter e:
"This lawsuit is without merit quality of law..."
It was a good thing the Latin alphabet could borrow the Zeta from the Greek one, and still call it Zeta without trademarks infringements.
BTW, in Italian (and AFAIK in Spanish, probably other languages) Z is called Zeta.... so the word "Zeta" is not even just a Greek word.
So if he wish to keep on using that idiotic service he could simply tell them that's a Latin or Italian or Spanish word, not a Greek one...
Since Italian and Spanish (as well as French, Portuguese, and Romanian) are Romance languages (nothing lovey-dovey, simply means they're based on Latin which came from Rome), it makes sense they would say "Zeta" or the like. Isn't that also why Brits say "Zed" as well?
Not quite:
"Exposé" is an English word that is not the same as "expose", so the accent is mandatory there. Same for résumé and rosé.
Also, there are a lot of words that historically had accents, like "naïve", "naïveté", "café", where the accents are now mostly omitted, but including them is still correct English, or "coöperative", which is now usually "co-operative".
Every single word in English is a "loan word" from another language as far as I'm aware, if you go back far enough, and if you look at texts like Beowulf, it is English, but completely unrecognisable to the English we speak and write today.
"Every single word in English is a "loan word" from another language as far as I'm aware"
That's an absurd statement.
(Incidentally, this is my "specialist subject", apart from programming in C and Perl and playing bass guitar.)
English developed from the languages spoken by the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain. All of the vocabulary we have from that time is native, and has parallels in Dutch, Danish, and the various forms of German. Not loanwords.
However, English does have a different history to Dutch or German -- or Frisian, our closest relative -- in that it did acquire Scandinavian words and grammar from the Viking occupations; and then French from the Norman conquest.
But, having said that, you can construct a modern English text which uses only Anglo-Saxon words, all of which are traceable back to a prehistoric, Indo-European source.
I can read Beowulf when it's put into standardized West Saxon, but the original manuscript has some dialect forms which I need to look up.
All made harder by the half arsed, or half completed English reformation / standardisation. So half of English words make phonetic sense, the rest are exceptions to whatever rules can be dragged, kicking and screaming, out of this half.
Add in that there are generally two words for most historic objects, thanks to the last successful invaders of the country a thousand years ago using their words for courtly matters and trade and the locals (aka plebs) keeping their words.
In short, English is a result of a large number of cultures invading the British Isles and a little while later finding that they have somehow become English and some other bugger was invading. Add in the celtic peoples (crude generalisation) swapping places and invading each other and various times when the "English" ruled bits of the neighbouring continent and it's amazing that we have a common enough language to converse vaguely intelligibly.
> "The English alphabet comes to mind"
Think about the origins of the word 'alphabet'.
I'll save you the googling...
early 16th century: from late Latin alphabetum, from Greek alpha, bēta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.
Futhorc was Frisian (probably, although it may have developed inland from there).
The closest equivalent in Old English was the ever-so-logical "stæfræw" (row of letters) or "stæfrof" (array of letters).
The Irish Monks brought the Latin "alphabetum" over long before 1475, although I cannot find an exact date ... certainly by the foundation of Iona in 563.
Alphabetum, futhorc and stæfræw/stæfrof were used concurrently for around 600 years.
"Yankee" was originally a disparaging name for Dutch pirates, probably from "Janke", which means "little John". Later, Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (now New York) gave the name to the English settlers in Connecticut in the early 1680s. It became a general term of contempt for New Englanders by the mid 1750s, and then the British decided to use it as a contemptuous term for all of us upstart colonists when we were busy kicking their asses back to England. As often happens in such cases, the newly landed Americans took the name as a battle trophy ... Except those in the South who tried without success to turn it back into a disparaging term during the Civil War[0].
Today, most Americans acknowledge it as a generic handle and don't look on it as a negative.
"Yank", the short form of Yankee, is from the 1770s.
"Yank" as in jerk or pull is Scottish from the 1820s, of unknown etymology.
That's half a dozen brain cells none of you will ever get back. Have a beer :-)
[0]Worst term ever. There is absolutely nothing civil about war.
Actually the sun setting bit was the Spanish, under Philip IV. We just borrowed it to describe our own rapine behaviour when we set out to steal everything that the Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese missed the first time around.Not forgetting the things that the Spanish, Dutch and Portugese had taken first time around but had recklessly not nailed down well enough. Made complicated because they were also doing the same however when, for example, the Dutch fleet accidentally sunk and the Spanish fleet somehow caught fire in a harbour and various other accidents that had absolutely nothing to do with piracy, fleet battles and definitely not to do with primacy of the ocean...
Last time the redcoats were there, they burned down the White House and the Capitol.
As for the Taliban, they've demonstrated their ability to kick Americans (and all their allies) out of Afghanistan. Just hope they don't take it into their heads to visit the homeland again, because last time that happened they dealt a blow that has left America still dizzy 20 years on.
"zeta" isn't trademarked, any more than "zed" is.
They are tradingmarking groups named after combination of just Greek letters, which, despite the fact they aren't acronyms is no different than the Latin trademarking of acronyms "IBM", "RAC", etc.
So alpha and beta releases would fall foul of this ID ten T error as would any text on electronics (and indeed most engineering, physics and chemistry texts to name just a few).
Their legal team (at Spring) appears to have a PEBKAC problem.
I often use two consecutive Greek characters and sometimes more (from the alphabet, not something like Zorba) in equations.
I guess they would refuse to print the equation that links the speed of light to permeability and permittivity...
We sell into the retro market and have software in stock that we bought in the 1990's which we listed on ebay a year or so ago. The publisher went bust a few years ago. A new software company has now set up (Nothing to do with the old company, no transfer of assets or IP) they registered their name as a Trademark earlier this year. They then complained to ebay who deleted the listing for the "New but old stock" titles. ebay have no procedure for appeals for take down notices saying I have to get the new company to confirm I'm not breaching their Trademark. The new company doesn't seem to understand that registering a trademark doesn't stop the marketing & selling of goods that already exist with the 'mark' applied to them.
Given that Greek letters and their names are used everywhere across a whole raft of maths and engineering locations for very sensible reasons, how could anyone have a trademark / rights over something that we all use and must have been pre-existing long before any trademark / patent could be submitted.
How did they work around the fact that a whole region in the world uses this as their national alphabet ?
Wikipedia also seems fairly happy to produce the alphabet too, which is a good thing since lots of other things rely on it - i.e. words..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet
There is definitely a need to review and remove all the stupid patents and trademarks so that the rest of the world can get on with its business.
"There is definitely a need to review and remove all the stupid patents and trademarks"
This is true. The USPTO is in serious need of repair, for a LOT of reasons.
"so that the rest of the world can get on with its business."
Perhaps, if your business involves getting Spring to print t-shirts for you. May I suggest an alternative vendor for your shirts? There is nothing in Law stopping you from getting them printed, just in Spring's brain-dead handling of the issue.
As it's a logical consequence of their approach of "approve everything and let the courts decide" coupled with the "sue it or lose it" principle.
It costs Spring nothing to deny on spurious grounds, but permitting something that breaches a bogus, inadmissible but nevertheless approved trademark costs them a lot to defend.
So yeah, it is the USPTO at fault.
"It costs Spring nothing to deny on spurious grounds"
On the contrary, it has cost them at least one sale, and probably many other potential sales based on bad publicity. For a small company, where margins are thin, that might be enough to tip them into insolvency.
"permitting something that breaches a bogus, inadmissible but nevertheless approved trademark"
The trademarks in question are not bogus, nor are they inadmissible. They are legal and above board. This is not in question. What IS in question is how Spring has decided that one portion of said trademark is somehow the whole, "IBM" is a trademark. However, not even IBM's landsharks would consider suing Intel, Brother and Mitsubishi if they used their initial letter as a portion of their trademark and copyright package.
"I think they're taking themselves too seriously."
They do. And they prove it by drinking entirely too much, puking out of the upstairs windows, and then falling down the stairs and puking some more all over the front lawn.
As Groucho Marx wrote in a telegram resigning from the Delaney Club "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER."
As a teenager, I saw the film Animal House. I therefore cannot take any of these US fraternities/sororities even remotely seriously.
They seem to vary between drinking clubs that leave the most basic student union in the dust and over-pretentious versions of the Bullingdon Club.
I was attending college in 1988 when, with some equally alcoholic friends, formed, but didn't trademark/register/etc: Nu Omega Tau
It only meant that we held to none of the rules of the greek organizations on campus:
1) we promoted excessive drinking*
2) we promoted excessive smoking**
3) we promoted excessive fucking***
* - there is no such thing
** - see above
*** - see above
There was no "horrendously stupid' idea! approved in the TM office.
as Affinity puts it
"Affinity Consultants..is hired by more than 100 Greek Organizations to manage the commercial use of their trademarks"
"The trademarks include the organization's name, nicknames, Greek letters, crest, badge, symbols, and other insignia"
A certain Catherine Zeta-Jones might be in a bit of trouble, although as she is hyphenated, she might just be ok:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Zeta-Jones
(I recall hearing that when Kirk Douglas was asked what he thought of his son, Michael, marrying her he responded with what I can only consider to the the best possible response: "I'd marry her myself, but my wife won't let me.")
Again, re-read the article. The whole issue is that Spring has no clue, and is jumping to conclusions based on ignorance of the law surrounding copyright.
Affinity is perfectly clear about what they expect with regard to third parties using their clients legal copyright and trademarks. Spring has over-reacted.
In the days of common sense we were unable to trademark a 3 letter combination, formed from the joint operation of 3 large British companies, in the UK and EU on grounds of lack of distinctiveness. The only thing we could do was incorporate it into a coloured graphic design.
OK, I may not be able to erase them from the whole Internet, but I can erase them from my bit of it:
> ian@desk:~$ ssh root@nameserver
>
> No mail.
> Last login: Thu Sep 2 19:52:08 2021 from desk
> 20:01:25 up 16 days, 7:57, 1 user, load average: 1.54, 0.56, 0.20
> root@nameserver:~# cd /etc/bind
> root@nameserver:/etc/bind#
>
> root@nameserver:/etc/bind# ed policy.zone
> 11253
> /insert new records here/a
> teespring.com CNAME .
> *.teespring.com CNAME .
> .
> w
> 11278
> q
> root@nameserver:/etc/bind# make
> Zone file policy.zone changed.
> Updating serial number on policy.zone.
> Notifying nameserver to use updated zone policy.zone.
> Done.
>
> root@nameserver:/etc/bind# exit
There, done. The delights of running your own DNS firewall, you can blackhole any domain you like.
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