
Entrepreneur, the Magazine That Sues Entrepreneurs - petethomas
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_22/b4230078121476.htm
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Joakal
Paragraph that sums the article: An attorney with the corporate law firm
Latham & Watkins informed Castro that EMI owns the U.S. trademark for the word
"entrepreneur." With 2,000 lawyers in 31 offices around the world, Latham
polices EMI's intellectual property aggressively. The firm even instructed
Castro to surrender his domain name to EMI. "If you fail to abide by these
demands," the letter said, "Entrepreneur Media will have no choice but to take
appropriate action to prevent continued use of an infringing mark and domain
name."

Looks like an app store issue! How can a business trademark a single English
word that effectively describes the industry?

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superppl
I'm curious if it would stand up in court.

Microsoft owns the trademark for "Windows", but walk into a hardware store and
you'll see dozens of companies that freely use windows in their name. I've
never heard of Microsoft going after them.

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Joakal
Trademarks are granted for certain products and services. In Microsoft's case,
it's computer services or something. If you try to offer an operating system
with a name that has Windows in it, then you would be sued.

Here's an example:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Microsoft_vs....](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Microsoft_vs._Lindows)

~~~
6ren
You're right in general, but that example doesn't support it: MS didn't win,
but bought the trademark. _For $20 million._

~~~
Joakal
Here's a list of other trademark litigation cases:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Microsoft_lit...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Trademarks)

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InfinityX0
Entrepreneur Magazine is the exact match domain of the magazine world. Because
of the name entrepreneurs will always read it, but the content is rarely good
enough to be worth buying or even shelf-reading.

~~~
dpcan
I totally disagree about the content.

I find it to be the absolute best small business / entrepreneur magazine out
there. I prefer it over Inc and others by far.

It opens your eyes beyond tech as it covers so much ground.

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stevenj
Single page:

[http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_22/b42...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_22/b4230078121476.htm)

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troymc
When I hear EMI, I don't think of Entrepreneur magazine. I think of the EMI
Group, the British music company. It seems this "EMI" has some other brand
confusions to take care of.

A quick search on uspto.gov reveals that there are several "EMI" trademarks.

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6ren
> In the end, Ernst and EMI settled their differences confidentially and out
> of court.

Pragmatic.

Curious side-note: when it was first introduced into Victoria Australia,
Hungry Jacks (Burger King in US) failed to trademark the term "whopper",
because was a generic term. But, today, it's a registered trademark. Over
time, advertising can create an association.

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amosson
Should 50 people be allowed to create magazines titled "Entrepreneur",
regardless of whether the word is commonly used. If you are the first to think
of something, shouldn't you have some _limited_ right to protect whatever
investment you are making in developing the idea. It is certainly fair to ask
if someone else's magazine title is sufficiently similar as to be confusing,
but that isn't a question for a judge and/or jury to adjudicate.

As technologists, we may instinctively view most attempts to use the law to
protect intellectual property as abusive, but at least there is a transparent,
although expensive, way to solve conflicts.

Think for a moment about how brands, like Entrepreneur Magazine, are built on
the internet. The authors work very hard to develop interesting content and
then try to get Google to rank the content. Unless you get very large, or
spend a lot of money in traditional brand advertising, it is unlikely that
anyone will find your content without Google's help. If someone comes along
and steals your content, and puts it on a more "trusted" site it may well be
seen by more people than the original (there have been plenty of Hacker News
articles pointing this out). In this case, the only redress is to try to get
Google to listen - certainly an uphill battle. Again, as technologists, we may
feel that Google system is fairer because its an algorithm, but when a spammer
abuses the system there is rarely any redress.

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lukejduncan
Do any HN'ers actually read Entrepreneur magazine?

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armandososa
I used to. Like another comment says, because of the name many aspiring
entrepreneurs read it.

The thing is, when you don't know _what_ you don't know it takes a while to
recognize good advice from piles of obvious bullshit like this magazine
articles.

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sradnidge
I'm not sure what the author of the article is trying to prove... that
trademark law can be (and is being) abused? At least he had the integrity to
quote the EMI lawyer throwing examples back of Bloomberg engaging in similarly
questionable legal action.

As several people have already pointed out, there is Windows, there is Time.
Oddly no-one has yet mentioned Face and Book.

~~~
khafra
There is a difference: Microsoft Windows has nothing to do with panes of glass
in walls; Time Magazine is not about clocks or watches. You're not supposed to
be able to trademark a pre-existing industry term within its own industry;
Lowe's Hardware should not be able to register "plywood" as trademark for
plywood and sue Home Depot.

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bearwithclaws
They also own a magazined called "StartUps":
<http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/startup/index.html>

Does that mean they will sue all the companies with the word "startups" in
their domain name as well?

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dotBen
Here's a sideways look at this:

If you have a trademark you are _legally_ required and compelled to go after
anyone who is infringing on it. Otherwise it is deemed that you have let it
lapse into the public domain.

 _enter debate on trademarks, patents, blah blah etc..._

My point is that clearly EMI should not have been awarded a trademark on the
term "entrepreneur" in the first place. However, once that trademark was
granted, there was no other option but for them to start aggressively guarding
it.

(and to a lesser extent EMI, if they had any decency, shouldn't have attempted
to trademark it).

Don't hate the player, hate the game, etc

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joe_the_user
_Don't hate the player, hate the game, etc_

I'm amazed that almost invariably, when a business doing something egregiously
despicable pops up hear, someone here comes up with a "don't hate the
player..." type argument.

But the argument falls flat in this case. Entrepreneur Magazine could give up
with their trademark tomorrow if they wished. The only thing your argument
shows is that to keep their evil, parasitical business model, they have to
keep aggressively pushing that evil, parasitical legal extortion on all
concerned - they can't just lazily extract only a few unearned bucks from a
few unlucky folks.

I think we can hate the player and the game here...

~~~
dotBen
As I said elsewhere, if they gave up the trademark, someone else would
probably register it and do the same. Thus hate the game.

~~~
alanh
And I suppose if I didn’t <negative action verb> your <relative>, some other
bloke would?

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slindstr
Given this article, I'm kind of surprised that they are using @EntMagazine for
their Twitter handle. Why not sue @entrepreneur into submission too?

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yuhong
Stardock was one of the victims that had a game called it.

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NHQ
quoth: EMI sees no irony, let alone bullying. In an e-mail, the company's lead
attorney at Latham, Perry J. Viscounty...

lol Perry J. Viscounty

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lukejduncan
Wow

