Australian Women Fight Over "Geekgirl" Trademark 187
bennyboy64 writes "Two prominent women in the Australian IT industry are in a bitter dispute over the ownership of the trademark 'geekgirl.' A woman attempting to use 'geekgirl' on Twitter told ZDNet that women had been advised by the trademark owner to stop doing so since she owned the trademark for the word. 'She noted her trademark and asked me to stop calling myself a "geekgirl" in general conversation and to cease using the hashtag "#geekgirl" on Twitter,' IT consultant Kate Carruthers said."
Ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm going to start calling myself slashdot now.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to start calling myself slashdot now.
OK, but now if I ever agree with one of your posts I'm going to have to say "I agree with Slashdot", and that alone will put me right.back.in.therapy
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Funny)
I'm going to start calling myself slashdot now.
OK, but now if I ever agree with one of your posts I'm going to have to say "I agree with Slashdot", and that alone will put me right.back.in.therapy
You think you have problems? What if this becomes a trend? How will I stand out anymore?
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Slashdot is a made up name. Geekgirl, if you read it as "Geek Girl", is just descriptive.
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It’s a verbal pun on the URL syntax.
It reads:
http:///..com
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I'm going to start calling myself slashdot now.
I request that you take steps to distinguish yourself from my prior art!
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I'd rather be remembered as 1560403.
People act Elitist with a low UID, I hope to reverse that trend.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
People act Elitist with a low UID, I hope to reverse that trend.
Let me know how that work out for you, filthy 7-digiter.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Funny)
I must be here...
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I thought the in-crowd were those people with a prime UID of which i'm unfortunately not one.
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I'm Spartacus!
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I'm Brian. And so is my wife.
Hash tag? (Score:2)
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Re:There's this thing called 'Google'
Do they have a Twitter feed or Facebook page?
I've decided (Score:3, Funny)
To trademark the term geek. Everyone else has to stop using it. I mean it! STOP IT YOU GUYS!
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Why should we r33l g33k$ care about what you think? :P
Or... (Score:3, Funny)
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<Mr. Slave>Jesus you two, calm it down.
The last thing we need is for girlintraining to show up here and give a few long-winded posts. </Mr. Slave>
Fixed that for you.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, I think he just called Kate Carruthers ugly.
...and yes, that was her picture attached to the story.
Who will win? (Score:4, Funny)
Who will win?
Under UK law, it would be the one who could prove they used it first.
Under French law, it would be who registered it first.
In Australian law? The one with the biggest tits.
Re:Who will win? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The original registration was "publication of electronic books, magazines and/or multimedia both online on a communications network and on recorded media including optical disks and magnetic media". In that category it might be suggestive rather than merely descriptive.
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I'm sure there was probably a movie in the 1980s which used the term "geek girl".
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In Australian law? The one with the biggest tits.
But justice is supposed to be blind. Does that mean there will be groping involved? How do I get on a jury in Australia? ;)
Re:Who will win? (Score:4, Funny)
In Japanese law, the one dressed as a schoolgirl.
In Russian law, the one who can bench press the most..
In Canadian law, the one with the most donuts.
In U.S. law, the one with the biggest tits (See Australian law).
In Italian law, the one with the biggest tits (See Australian and U.S. law).
In French law, the one with the hairiest armpits.
In Saudi law, the one with the least amount of skin showing.
In Dutch law, the one with the most pot.
In Latvian law...got nothin'.
In Irish law, the one who can drink the most beer.
In Scottish law, the one who can drink the most scotch (duh) while playing golf.
In English law, the one with the straightest teeth.
In Brazilian law, the one with a Brazilian.
Re:Who will win? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, no. In French law, the one who marries the president.
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You are so wrong about the Russian one, it would be the one who marries the richest Oil Tycoon / Politician.
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As long as one of them doesn't have extremely small tits, or they'll be deemed illegal.
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Re:Who will win? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this just someone claiming they own the trademark, or can they like prove it - like they have been using it and writing for ZDNet for 15 years using that name?
If they really have been using it as a handle for years, and has business tied to it, then that is a legit argument.
And, seriously, the other girl is actually allowing this to go to court? It takes like a whole 20 seconds to change one's username on Twitter, and all your followers automatically go to your new username. I would have changed it to GeekGirl2, and just have avoided the legal costs.
Re:Who will win? (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, in reading the article, the one who is sueing has had the trademark since 1995, the second one registared, but was not approved, in January of this year. Sounds like a legit complaint to me.
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It goes to the one with the biggest knife!
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Tit's? Those aren't tits. [whips her norks out] These are tits!
They should totally make a pr0n Crocodile Dundee spoof with a female lead.
Which one is here on Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which one hangs out on Slashdot?
If neither of them do than neither deserves the trademark.
Re:Which one is here on Slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
http://slashdot.org/~geekgirl/friends [slashdot.org]
Pre-twitter uid i think.
Probably a man though ; ).
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About that conversation:
He who accepts advice from people who write 'r' instead of 'are' and 'u' instead of 'you' deserves their time wasted.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20041201 [userfriendly.org]
Australian trademark law must be very different. (Score:2)
n/t
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Or is it that both are using the mark to sell the same "service"?
Why 'girl'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do women, even the most intelligent ones, tend to use the word girl in their names?
Is it for attention? It sounds fucking stupid. Just like when I see boy in a name, I tend to think the person behind it is a dimwitted moron with no imagination.
(Anonymous Coward is so much more impressive.)
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Next you will suggest geekqueen.
It would be cool for us geeks to have a self-appointed queen, though. But not a king. We're too arrogant.
I prefer the gender agnostic term, AlphaGeek
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It is for attention, of course; but it works, so I'm not sure how stupid it is. You might say, "It's not the right sort of attention!" but this is Earth, we are humans, and most people are influenced by sexuality. IOW, if you're going to get a little more of what you want - whether that's money, employment prospects, miscellaneous favours or simply admirers - from pointing out that I'm a girl, then you might do so.
Meanwhile, if you're a straight male - no matter how "intelligent" - you might be just a littl
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Meanwhile, if you're a straight male - no matter how "intelligent" - you might be just a little bit nicer to the skirt than the fat greybeard. Doing so (or wanting to do so, even if you try and fail at repressing it) is what defines you as heterosexual rather than homosexual or asexual, after all.
Are you saying all men are sexist or gay?
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Only to the extent that I'm saying all straight men are straight.
IOW, all straight men will treat particular women in a way that they'd never treat any man, by definition. A man never has the opportunity to be treated that way by a straight man, because he is a man. For example, if you were a straight woman and I were a straight woman, there'd no chance that you'd treat me 'specially nice because you feel romantically/sexually inclined toward me; but if you were a man, you might do such a thing. In this lat
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If I was talking to her in person, probably. In the Internet (especially a text-only medium like Twitter), I don't think it would affect me.
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What? Like "fanboy"?
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Whoosh.
Just like when I see boy in a name, I tend to think the person behind it is a dimwitted moron with no imagination.
What? Like "fanboy"?
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Why do women, even the most intelligent ones, tend to use the word girl in their names?
Geekwoman just doesn't sound the same.
Just like when I see boy in a name, I tend to think the person behind it is a dimwitted moron with no imagination.
Yeah, Geekman is much better.
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Referencing yourself as "girl" when it can be linked to your real self is not the wisest thing to do from a professional standpoint.
"geekgirl" just doesn't inspire an image of professional capacity to me. The use of the word "chick" in the username bugs me for the same reason. Why are these women fighting for its use when it's related to their professional context?
Sometimes identifying oneself as female in a username comes off as begging for attention (or maybe just acknowledging it), but it can also be u
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Maybe she doesn't care about people who take such conclusions based on a nickname?
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When you express yourself in a rational manner (i.e. at the level of human discourse rather than a scream of pain, say), it is implied that you care about how people react to your expressions. Why else would you be expressing them?
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I didn't say "any conclusion", I said "such conclusions". In this case I was talking about how the GP referred it could affect her professional credibility. Maybe she doesn't care about people who draw conclusions about her professional ability based on a simple nickname.
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Because rodeos are fucking gay.
Re:Why 'girl'? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Gender-non-specific Marianne,
Answer: They don't. I find it quite offensive to be called a girl no matter what the context.
That's where your understanding of communication and the concept of freedom of speech fails. Without context, it is entirely irrational to find a naming offensive. Take nigger, cunt and moron: the words all have baggage, but "nigger" is an entirely friendly greeting among some groups; "cunt" is infinitely less "offensive" than "vagina", which reduces the definition of the cunt to a receptacle for a man's penis; and "moron" can be anything from a clinical diagnosis to a humorous
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I fail to see how is this related to "freedom of speech".
I believe people should be able to say what they want, but that doesn't mean I can't be offended or even that I have to listen to them.
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(1). Freedom of speech flows from freedom of thought which flows from an individual man's rational and free mind.
In this case, to argue that a particular word is offensive "no matter what the context" is denying the possibility of a rational difference between the methods of expression of one man's thoughts and another man's thoguhts, which comes down to a denial of the possibility of a rational difference between your thoughts and another man's thoughts. Such a denial is the genesis of censorship ("you can
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Ah, the white knight effect [slashdot.org]. When I speak in straight terms to someone who identifies as a woman, some guy inevitably crawls out to criticise me for being too harsh. Yet when I speak to someone who identifies as a man or who does not identify their gender, it's much more likely that the argument proper is tackled.
To address your one, weak point: no-one's using the term "cunt" in a medical sense, so while I'm sure it gives you the opportunity for prurient debate, it usually doesn't really matter how many fol
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Ah, the white knight effect [slashdot.org]. When I speak in straight terms to someone who identifies as a woman, some guy inevitably crawls out to criticise me for being too harsh. Yet when I speak to someone who identifies as a man or who does not identify their gender, it's much more likely that the argument proper is tackled.
I'd have thought you were a jerk for your post whether you were talking to a man, a woman, or a third-unspecified-gender-purple-skinned-nine-eyed-alien-from-Gliese531.
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for your edification, I will point out that the word "cunt" does not specifically equate to vagina. The term refers more generally to the genital area, of which the vagina is a part.
Yes, that’s exactly what he said. Go back and read it again.
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I find it quite offensive to be called a girl no matter what the context.
That's good to know, Sugartits.
it sounds like you can own it (Score:2)
Betrayal of geekdom (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who claims a trademark on such a generic term should hand in their geek card and instead join the Patent Troll Club. :-(
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Was it generic in 1995?
It is now. Like kleenex.
trademark law (Score:3, Informative)
According to trademark law (at least in the US), if you don't defend your trademark you risk losing it. This unfortunately means people with trademarks wind up setting lawyers on everyone who produces anything vaguely familiar to that trademark, even if they don't particularly want to. Don't know whether it's true in this case, but it would be improper to jump to conclusions.
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Common words shouldn't be trademarked. Yeah, like Apple and Windows.
And apparently, GeekGirl.
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Common words shouldn't be trademarked. Yeah, like Apple and Windows.
Why not? Sure, you can't have copyright on common words, you can't prevent people from using those words in the context of their normal definition, and you can't prevent people from using those words as names of companies in other industries. If I open "Eastern Computer, Inc.", then I don't see why someone else who wants to open a computer shop across the street shouldn't be required to come up with a different name. It's not like you could prevent someone from opening "Eastern Dry Cleaners" or "Eastern Plu
What would Australian law say herer (Score:2)
As far as I know most trademark laws have specific restrictions to prevent abuse as a form of censorship.
Trademarks are meant to be a CONSUMER protection device, not a corporate IP tool.
What's next, Intel forbidding us to use the word Intel to talk about their company ? Of course not. It's only a trademark violation if we try to call another company (in the SAME sphere of business) by that name.
So I don't see how using the word, even IF it's trademarked could be a violation.
With that said, there are other r
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Ever heard of Apple Computer? You can get a trademark for BEER brand computers or shoes, just not for BEER brand beer.
You are right that she would not have a case under USA law, though, unless the accused infringer is using the mark to sell similar goods or services. Trademark law can get complicated, but as a general rule in order to infringe you must use the mark in a way that might
thought i saw a geekgirl moniker here on slashdot (Score:2)
or was it geekgrrl?
ah yes:
http://slashdot.org/~geekgrrl [slashdot.org]
what say you, resident trademark pseudoinfringer?
is the trademark with or without the "#"? (Score:3, Funny)
There's about an 11 or 12 % difference between geekgirl and #geekgirl. What's she got the trademark on?
As a side note, who volunteers to "pound-geekgirl", as "#geekgirl" invites? (better than hashing her...)
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There's about an 11 or 12 % difference between geekgirl and #geekgirl. What's she got the trademark on?
Irrelevant, since # is a prefix required by the system. There's about a 38% difference between Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola.com, but just try to claim that there's no likelihood of confusion there.
Cat fight? (Score:2)
Meow! (Score:2, Funny)
Easiest solution (Score:2)
Let the hottest one win
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Oil (Score:2)
Light Vegetable Oil is better, if you want to see the sexy bits. And it increases the chance of losing whatever clothing might still be on. Mud just obfuscates things.
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Wrong way of fighting it (Score:2)
You don't support a broken system by trying to use it yourself. You just ignore it.
If Carruthers believes that geekgirl should be in common usage, then she should just keep on using it, encouraging others to use it, and laugh off Cross and her silly demands until she gets over herself and realises that her opportunity to assert ownership of that trademark was 1995, not 2010.
Undefended, thus lost (Score:2)
Registered in 95 and only now contesting its use? Sounds like someone didn't defend his trade mark.
NEXT CASE!
How can they trademark something this common? (Score:4, Insightful)
This entire case reeks of horse manure in my opinion.
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I was just wondering why this wasn't handled with a work-around, vs. dealing with all the hassle?
A single underscore does wonders: geek_girl
Or the "even more hip" geekgrrl ?
Even the more passe minus sign would do: geek-girl
If she's into copyright infringement, may I suggest: g33kg1rl ?
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geekgirl [slashdot.org]...
geek_girl [slashdot.org]...
geekgrrl [slashdot.org]...
g33kg1rl [slashdot.org]...
geek-girl is, as of the moment, not taken, although I was sorely tempted to register it.
Google GeekGirl (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/search?q=geekgirl [google.com]
About 70,900 results (0.27 seconds)
Yeah- I can see it's been *vigorously* defended by the way all these uses reflect that one person. This is even more annoyingly stupid than Lucasarts owning the term Droid.
Right.
Pug
let's all call ourselves "geekgirl" (Score:2)
If a couple thousand people in Australia started calling themselves "geekgirl", this issue would probably go away. It could even get in the dictionary.
"geekgirl" gets 70,000 hits on Google. The trademark owner must be really really prolific.
What name both of them can't use (Score:2)
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Oh, c'mon. You know you'd hit it if you could ever get her into your parents basement.
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Are cause and effect reversed in that statement?
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What about trademarking "Two Girls, One Trademark"?
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my favorite comment made by a male scientist at a conference "you should submit a picture of yourself with your journal article to assure the article's publication (it was published w/out the picture- jerk).
That sounds more to me like a complement on your looks than a deliberate slam on the publish-ability of the article without a picture.
Oh, and you left out a quotation mark.