The Dummies trademark spit
Summary Description A nonprofit Australian Web site has become the target of US book publisher IDG Books.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Editorial InformationArticle Location http://www.newswire.com.au/0005/SR15.htm
Article Topic Special Report
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Story Group 000521
Post Date 15/05/2000 04:31 PM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 15/05/2000 12:56 PM


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Introduction
Ruthless online policing of its well-known For Dummies trademark has earned technology publisher IDG Books (IDGB) notoriety on the Web.

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Sites containing the two words in sequence have received letters threatening legal action if the offending pages are not removed. Last week, the controversy reached Australia when a nonprofit arts group in Newcastle, NSW, satirised the book series.
After reading letters from IDGB's lawyers about a page on his site which included the words 'for dummies' in its title, Octapod volunteer Nick Ritar was so annoyed that he posted a fake book cover entitled Corporate Standover Tactics for Dummies. It contained cover lines such as "Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down . . . Instantly I felt like a cold, hard bastard" and "The fun and easy way to learn how to patent the English language".
Octapod is a volunteer centre which provides self-publishing and communication tools for artists, particularly students and the unemployed. The group coordinates annual arts events such as electrofringe, the National Young Writers Festival and Cultural Stomp.
"One of the things we were doing was teaching people how to do screenprinting and as part of that series of workshops, Octapod volunteer Sean Healy created a Web page called 'The Idiotic Guide to Screenprinting for Dummies'. It was just a basic little page that he spent half an hour putting up," Ritar said.
Two years later, on October 28, 1999, the Octapod received an email from the 'trademark coordinator' at IDGB, demanding the material be removed from the Web within two weeks.
"It was polite, it wasn't actually rude, but it was quite direct," Ritar said. "It gave us no option, take it down or else. We weren't particularly impressed. At the time we had a lot of other things going on . . . we were too busy to deal with it. We did think 'you've gotta be kidding, why bother?'. It was too much work from their perspective, why would they care?"
Healy informed IDGB that Octapod would discuss its request at its next meeting in December of that year, and then again in January. But the volunteers were busy and by February 2, the page was still online. A strongly worded letter from IDGB's senior attorney was addressed to Healy: "Please be aware that IDGB is now fully prepared to enforce its rights to protect its registered trademark and has every intention of promptly sending this matter to outside counsel in your country."
Octapod changed the title to 'The Idiotic Guide to Screenprinting 4 DummieZ' and Healy sent a weary reply to IDGB. Nothing more was heard from the publishing company. But last week, Ritar placed his parody online and a link was published on hardcore tech news site Slashdot. Octapod received 40,000 page impressions on one day on a page which linked to the original offending document. Until then, only about 50 people had ever accessed the screenprinting guide in its three-year existence.
Ritar estimates he has now received 200 to 300 emails from visitors, mostly letters of support. But several were in support of IDGB and he now admits some sympathy for the company's position.
In the US, trademark law requires that a company is seen to protect itself from 'trademark dilution', because there is a risk that if the name enters popular expression it will lose its legal protection. Although it has developed a meaning associated with IDG Books, people have come to use 'for dummies' as an everyday expression and if it wishes to keep the trademark valid, IDG Books must try to police this.
"We don't actually hate IDGB. We just think the whole thing is stupid, that corporations are forced to use their muscle to intimidate small nonprofits into capitulation," Ritar said.
In its legal letters, the company cites examples of trademark dilution such as Kleenex tissues, Scotch tape, xeroxing and aspirin. Each of these words has entered everyday language.
Several books with titles containing the words 'for dummies' were published before IDGB took out its trademark on the phrase. And according to the small print of its Web site, IDGB also now holds trademarks on all of the following: "Dummies Man, Dummies Daily, the Dummies Store, Dummies World, Dummies Rule!, Dummies Books, Dummies 101, For Teachers, For Kids & Parents, Simplified, Strategies, Secrets, Studio Secrets, 3-D Visual, Teach Yourself, Teach Yourself VISUALLY, and Master VISUALLY".
However, the US law which requires IDGB to take action also states that non-commercial use of a trademark is 'not actionable'. Nor is the use of a trademark in news reporting and commentary. In policing 'for dummies', it appears the company may have simply used search engines to find where the two words appear on the Web, and emailed site owners accordingly.
In October last year, the administrator of a mailing list archive received a takedown letter from IDG Books regarding an archived email sent in 1998 suggesting that a 'for dummies' book should be written about sendmail. The Swedish author of a nonprofit guide to a role-playing game was also asked to remove the words from his page. Lars Feltby was so incensed that he set up a protest site detailing his case. A Norwegian who published a Web page called 1914 For Dummies was also pursued. To this day, these pages and others remain online, despite their authors being billed by IDGB for legal costs.
John Goerzen, author of the Linux Programming Bible published by IDGB, has publicly stated he is re-evaluating plans to write further books for the company following its 'for dummies' actions, saying he cannot understand its concerns about nonprofit sites using the phrase.
"If they were printed and sold in bookstores with a yellow cover, I'd easily support your claim," he wrote in an open letter last week.
Goerzen has deliberately published a Web page containing the words 'for dummies'. Meanwhile, supporters of Feltby have threatened to reproduce his page on their own servers, as has been done with material censored by governments around the world.
However, Ritar contends that other nonprofit Web sites targeted in this manner do not have to take action.
"Tell 'em to go stick it, basically. It's not illegal, you're not breaking the law. As long as you're not doing it to make money, then you're pretty much right -- if you're not trying to use the hard work that they've done to spread their brand name and make money for yourself. Especially when it comes under the category of parody. And the thing is, the words 'for dummies' are going to be used for parody all over the place, it almost becomes a parody just by using those words.
"It's pretty hard trying to defend the trademark -- it's like trying to copyright a joke."


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Bulletin SummarySpecial Report: The Dummies trademark spit
Ruthless online policing of its well-known 'for Dummies' trademark has earned technology publisher IDG Books (IDGB) notoriety on the Web. Last week, the controversy reached Australia when a nonprofit arts group in Newcastle, New South Wales, satirised the brand. After receiving letters from IDGB's lawyers about a page on his site which included the words "For Dummies", Octapod volunteer Nick Ritar posted a fake book cover entitled 'Corporate Standover Tactics for Dummies'. US trademark law requires that a company be seen to protect itself from 'trademark dilution', because there is a risk that if the name enters popular expression it will lose its legal protection.

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Special Report: The Dummies trademark spit

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