I’m not alone

Just for the hell of it, I did a search on google for the poison phrases “For dummies” trademark. Wow, there’s a lot of results under that – “For dummies” have been busy bastards people. Fridgemagnet dealt with the exact same situation. Frommers has a letter from Wileys that lists all their supposed trademarks (it’s a Word document, more’s the pity), and there’s many other links besides. Google lists 52,200 results for that little search.

I suspect I may lose the case. However, the war is another matter. *Grin*

UPDATED :Thanks to Quin, who reveals in the comments below that the cynical fuckers Wiley are releasing Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks For Dummies. Ah, sweet irony. I wonder if it’s just “For dummies case law” under a new cover?

Litigation. An update

First of all, thanks for your comments (and posts on your own sites, Peter, Iain and Sapientum) – they’ve been greatly appreciated. As yet, I’ve yet to hear a response from Wiley’s. (Oh, and I did check the log-files this morning – three visits from wiley.com, so I assume there’s at least a bit of legitimacy to this lot) Personally, I find this entire thing from Wiley’s just hilarious – and I do wonder how far they’re prepared to take it. Peter is completely correct when he says I set up this domain as a pisstake – and yes, it doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to realise that the colour-scheme was based upon an homage to the “for dummies” books. When it first came up as an idea, d4d™ was just one of those silly conversational things – but the idea took off, so I bought the domain. According to the initial plan, it was going to be far more satirical and a full piss-take of the for-dummies series, but that didn’t happen. Instead d4d™ mutated into the warped beast that’s here today.

From day one, there’s always been the disclaimer disavowing itself from Wiley, For Dummies, blah blah. D4D™ never passed itself off as being anything to do with the book series, and that’s the way I see it continuing.

Over at Sapientum, it’s already been said that perhaps I changed the graphics and acquiesced too quickly to their demands. Maybe so. However, I’ve always referred to the site as d4d™, so it’s not that much of a trauma. Besides, I quite like the new pointy man – and the raised middle finger is definitely indicative of Wiley’s attitude to the world. However, the domain name will stay mine ’til Wileys make a decision. In the meantime, I’m also going to sort out a new domain name – suggestions gratefully received, although I think I know what it’ll be *Grin* – so any changeover will happen easily and smoothly. I do feel that as it’s Wileys who are raising this as a problem, that they should be willing to pay for registering a new domain name – that’s a reasonable offer, so I’m absolutely certain they won’t take me up on it.

I don’t yet know how long or hard I’ll fight this – as Peter and GF both say, Wileys have far more resources than I, so the winner of any battle is likely to be a foregone conclusion. However, the attitude that this has been done with so far, the typically litigious American way of “stop using it, or we’ll sue – this is federal law” utterly stinks. If anything could be more calculatedly red-rag to a bull, I don’t know what it is. The fact that the trained monkey-turd lawyer/administrator for Wiley couldn’t even email me (and there’s a contact me page with the email address on) shows how abysmal they really are. As such, I’m not going to take it laying down. I’m looking forward to seeing Kirk Bateman’s response – and also whether he’ll manage to figure out how to reply to an email instead of leaving snotty comments.

Response

I never could resist the chance to reply…

Dear Mr Bateman,

Many thanks for your comments – I would refer to them as an email, but it seems you are far more prepared to leave comments instead of emails. Obviously this gives the lie to the intent “to deal with this matter informally“, as the communication was left in the public domain. I understand this actually can be seen to constitute the UK criminal offence of “threatening behaviour”, as your open communication contained threats of un-named further actions.

Regarding the points in your comments, I should first of all point out that as destruction-for-dummies.co.uk is a completely UK-based domain, it does not fall under the “federal” laws of the US. The domain (which I shall hereafter refer to as d4d™, which is it’s normal name) has been registered with Nominet (the UK registrar) since 2000 – I am surprised it has taken your company this long to find it. I would also suggest that Wileys should perhaps spend some money and reserve all “for dummies” domain names, if they are so obsessive about this style of domain name.

Having read the copyright notices on www.dummies.com, I also notice that you insist upon holding the trademark for (among others) the phrase “Unofficial Guide” – having looked on Google ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%22unofficial+guide%22&spell=1 ) it seems you have at least 72,000 other trademarks to consider. I should also point out that since the first day of owning the d4d™ domain, there has been a disclaimer on the index page, disavowing all relation to the for-dummies brand. However, in accordance with your comments, I have removed any reference to “for dummies” from the site graphics etc. Obviously it is impossible to remove the reference to “for dummies” from the domain name.

If Wiley is serious about attempting to remove d4d from the web, I would hope that as part of the “informal” proceedings, they would be willing to pay for the registration and hosting of a new .co.uk domain name of my choosing. As it is purely down to Wiley’s insistence that this matter has arisen, I believe that this resolution would be one that would be mutually satisfying.

If you have any further comments, please feel free to contact me by replying to this email. At least that should help it keeping the comments out of the public domain.

Sincerely

Lyle™
Domain Owner.

Busted

Left in my comments box
Re: Trademark Infringement
Domain name: destruction-for-dummies.co.uk

Dear Mr. xxxxx Lyle:

Wiley Publishing, Inc. (�Wiley�), owner of the famous and well-regarded (well regarded? don’t make me laugh!) FOR DUMMIES trademarks, recently became aware of your registration of the above-referenced domain name (well done, it’s only been registered for two years). You may be unaware that use of the phrase �For Dummies� or a similar formative of this phrase as a domain name infringes and dilutes our famous trademarks, and such use is not permitted under federal trademark laws. (so – that’s US laws then. What about UK law?)

In order to fully protect (go on, split another infinitive) its valuable trademarks, Wiley unfortunately cannot allow use of the domain name, destruction-for-dummies.co.uk, for a web site (so why didn’t you get the domain name yourselves?). Our initial review of this site indicates it is active and includes the For Dummies? trademark in the title of the page. Wiley requests that you discontinue using the domain name destruction-for-dummies.co.uk, and remove all references to FOR DUMMIES from your site.

While we prefer to resolve this matter informally (if it’s that informal, why did you send this to my comments box and do it in public rather than sending it by email?), Wiley is fully prepared to use all legal remedies available to protect our trademark rights and corporate assets (pay for my trip to the US and I’ll seeya in court).

Please contact me if you have any questions. (Oh, rest assured, I will. And I’ll publish it all here too) Wiley appreciates your cooperation with this matter.

Sincerely,

Kirk A. Bateman
Administrator, Brand Management & Contracts
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
(317) 572-3355
Email: kbateman@wiley.com

And yes, I do intend to leave the full name, address, phone number (it’s his direct line, folks) and email address here. They were left in the public domain. That’s where they’ll stay.

Harlem Biblebashers

Sometimes I just love the BBC’s news site (hell, I love it most of the time anyway, regardless) and in particular their ability to find some of the quirkier stories.

Today’s gem is the Gray (sic) Friars, a set of Franciscan monks who have come to London from the New York Bronx. They’ve even started lessons in basketball, and are entering “proper matches”. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that not all Christians are the same as the bigots of the Anglican Church (and many other Churches)

Taking the piss – the first 2003 Festering Season mention

At work today, I received an email. They’re already trying to organise/sort out their Christmas office do. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh lucky lucky me.

My RSVP simply said “Bah Humbug”.

Will they have the feet?

Well, last year I dragged my parents to see Marsyas at Tate Modern. (I need to drag them to Birdget Riley’s exhibition there this year) And now it looks like I’ll have to force my father to the Science Museum in London too.

Actually, who am I kidding? I’ll enjoy an exhibition of the technology behind the Lord of the Rings films too. *Grin*