Another big trademark issue this week:

The Big Apple has a new logo, and Apple says: Drop dead.

At issue is the emblem for New York City’s GreeNYC campaign, which has started to appear around the city on bus shelters, hybrid gasoline-electric taxicabs and even Whole Foods shopping bags.

The GreeNYC logo shows a stylized apple with a stalk and a leaf. It bears a resemblance to Apple’s famous logo — a resemblance Apple says infringes on its trademark. Read more…

A company’s brand is their lively hood. I don’t blame any company for vigorously defending their brand, Apple especially. Apple has gotten to that point in brand development where they don’t even need to write out their name on ads anymore, they just put the icon in the corner and everyone knows who it is. Target does the same thing. So since a little Apple icon is their whole identity, if anyone else out there uses a stylized Apple they’re going to be scrutinized for possibly diluting Apple’s brand.

When you register a trademark, you have to specify in which class or industry you will be using it to conduct business. You’d specify something like computers, food & beverage, telecommunications, etc. If someone uses a similar name or logo in a class where your trademark isn’t registered, you have a great case. If they aren’t in your industry or class, it’s a lot more difficult to prove dilution. NYC doesn’t make computers, and Apple doesn’t make cities. Right? Case closed?

Unfortunately, not in this case. NYC will probably get to use their Apple, it’s really not that similar. But if they let one Apple through without saying anything, they have to let all of them through. They need to get it down on paper why this one is isn’t an issue, just to ensure no precedent is set that will work against them in a more legitimate claim in the future.

From a recent, frightening article that every internet user should be aware of:

Congress is going to hand the operation of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Democrats are helping. It’s a shame.

Don’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it. (Click here to read the rest of the article…)

Like many people, I feel like this bill would be more than just “turning over control” of the internet to companies like AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast. It would be the end to any and all internet Democracy that has existed up until now. It’s turning web content into a service only a few can afford to provide, where the little guy is not only crushed, but is not even able to start up.

If we aren’t careful about things like this, in 5 years the internet won’t be a public medium. You’ll pay for “Comcast internet” or “Verizon internet,” each of which will offer you access to a limited number of sites under contract with Comcast. For example, they’d slow down your connection to Yahoo, if Yahoo didn’t pay them a “high speed premium”.

If you don’t think this threat is real, check out this site for more detailed information about it. From the site:

The telephone and cable companies are filling up congressional campaign coffers and hiring high-priced lobbyists. They’ve set up “Astroturf” groups like “Hands Off the Internet” to confuse the issue and give the appearance of grassroots support.

Congress is now considering a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act. The primary bill in the House is called the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006″ and is sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), Rep Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Miss.) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.).

The current version of the COPE Act includes watered-down net neutrality provisions that are essentially meaningless. An amendment offered in a key subcommittee by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), which would have instituted real net neutrality requirements, was defeated after intense industry lobbying against it.

But it’s not too late yet. A full committee vote on the measure — and another opportunity to save the Internet — could happen as soon as April 26.

The Senate is moving more deliberately on the issue. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has introduced the Internet Nondiscrimination Act of 2006, which would ensure net neutrality. And Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (R-N.D.) are expected to introduce bipartisan amendment supporting net neutrality when the Senate takes up its own rewrite of the Telecommunications Act later this year.

But neither chamber will support the free and open Internet without widespread public pressure. To keep the Internet free and open, Congress needs to hear from millions of Americans right now.

Ever since the development of paper and the printing press, corporations have been able to make tons of money from mass communication. Now with the internet, data is cheaply stored and cheaply moved around. Huge corporations, from music and movie studios to companies like AT&T and Comcast feel that they’ve lost control of communication and aren’t making the kind of money off of it that they supposedly ‘deserve.’ So they’re trying to take it back, and they have the support of our elected leaders. Instead of merely being a service provider, they will be a censor that can retake all that lost revenue by having total control.

This is nothing but selling the heart and soul of American Democracy in order to allow corporate powers to cash in on the movement of information. It’s disgusting and it’s wrong. Everyday corporate powers and congressmen sponsored by these nuts chip at the foundation stones of Democracy to fill their coffers with cash to pay their spin doctors.

Now maybe I’m falling into a big foolish overreaction here and I’m just being another doom-sayer, but this kind of crap has been happening behind our backs for far too long. Guys and girls, it’s never too late to take to the streets.

I read a silly article today - I’m sure you’ve probably seen the brand name “Creative” in the electronics section of your local Best Buy or Target. Hopefully you’ve just seen it, and not actually bought it. If you have bought Creative’s products, I’m sorry for you.

An excerpt from the article:

Apple could be in for a bruising legal fight with rival Creative over the technology used in iPod music players.

Creative boss Sim Wong Hoo has told the BBC he plans to “pursue aggressively” a US patent it owns on a system used to navigate music on digital players.

Mr Sim was speaking at the launch of Creative’s latest rival to the iPod video, the Zen Vision: M.

Creative was one of the first to market digital music players in 2000, but has since been overshadowed by Apple.

For a company named “Creative,” it’s a bit ironic that they have to rip-off Apple on absolutely everything they claim to “invent.” Then they have the audacity to sue the very people they’ve ripped off? How asinine is that?

I mean come on… It’s called prior art, Creative. You don’t have a chance. Apple’s had the same file organization system in question since the turn of the century in their Macintosh operating system.

If Creative were to win this ridiculous lawsuit, would we lose column view in Mac OS? What about Windows Explorer and Folders view? Will they be next? C’mon. They’re really grabbing at straws here. They’re whining about how files are organized and Creative has become the official “ambulance chaser” of the tech world.

It’s a wonder that Apple doesn’t file a counterclaim against them over the industrial design of the Creative players, as the Creative player has some pretty striking resemblances to the iPod.

I’m not quite sure how Creative managed to patent this navigation system - because it sort of contradicts the famous Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit from back in the day when Apple sued Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft Windows infringed on Apple’s rights to the point-and-click desktop interface that we’ve all come to know and love. I think we all know how that turned out seeing the success of Microsoft. The court ruled in that case that the desktop point-and-click metaphor was an unprotectable idea. The court also found that most of the individual elements that made up this desktop metaphor were not protected by copyright because they were functional rather than original expression. But it was useful - so I don’t know why a utility patent could not have been granted.

Software-based inventions rarely qualify for a patent, which is why it was legal for Microsoft to take the point-and-click desktop interface concept from Apple. Apple was only able to copyright the concept, but then the court ruled that a copyright wasn’t justified either. Now Apple is getting sued because someone was somehow granted the type of patent that they were once denied. It’s an unfair world for Steve Jobs’ Apple Computer, no wonder the guy has gone bald.

Most software-based inventions have historically been disqualified from a patents because they are considered obvious over the prior art, and must therefore be protected in another manner such as trade secrets or copyright law. As I just mentioned in the Apple case, that doesn’t always work either. Basically all patents that have been obtained on software are utility patents, which is a patent that is based on usefulness. This is likely the type of patent Creative has, but if Creative was able to obtain a utility patent, I don’t see why Apple wasn’t able to obtain one on point-and-click. Apparently the USPTO didn’t know anything about computers back in the 80’s.

So who does Creative think they’re kidding claiming that the design for the new Creative player was not heavily influenced (if not stolen) from the iPod design? Then they have the nerve to turn and claim that Apple stole their navigation? As of today, I officially will never buy any products with the Creative name on it. Not that I would have anyway, since it’s fairly common knowledge that all of their stuff is cheap junk rip-offs of something else. But at least my boycott is now official.

I logged on to the computer this afternoon, thought I’d write a little bit about the past week but then my screen flickered and shut off on the Mac laptop. I kept trying to boot the computer up but I’d get no response from the screen. Probably the logic board, again. Lucky thing that I had a month and a half left on the extended warranty I purchased. The first logic board went out about a year and a half after I got the computer in December 2002, and now almost exactly a year and a half later it goes out again. With my warranty now up for good on the Mac at the end of next month, I guess I’d better think about getting a new computer in the next year and a half.

So the Mac will be away for a week, and now I’m working on the backup computer, my old Dell Laptop. It’s a pretty heavy and clunky big thing when compared to my tiny, lightweight Mac laptop. Plus it’s much slower, and is still running Windows 98 SE, which I guess is pretty ancient at this point. I bought the Dell laptop the summer before I left for college, it was used at that point and I’d gotten a pretty good deal on it. I knew I’d need a computer so I worked and saved up my money for my own laptop. Since then the battery is no longer any good so it has to be plugged in if you want to use it. But that’s to be expected, I suppose, after all it is about 8 years old now. The little switch that shuts the screen off when you close the laptop is a little touchy so you have to fiddle with that to get the screen working when you start up the computer. That’s kind of a pain, but no big deal. Now that I think of it, I actually haven’t had to replace any hardware on the old Dell and it still runs, so it’s served as a good backup when the Mac is on the fritz. The last time the Mac went away for a week, I was able to finish my class projects on the Dell that week. If not for this thing, I probably would have been working at the school’s computer lab until midnight.

When the Mac started having problems today I was in the middle of watching the beginning of the race. I contemplated whether bringing the Mac to the Apple store after the race would be fine, but I figured there would be a huge line at the “Genius Bar” so I decided to just skip the race today. Good thing I did, I was in line at the Apple store for about an hour and a half, because I had to wait for the twenty teenagers in line in front of me who needed help updating the software on their iPods… something most people should be able to do at home themselves without much difficulty.

Apparently if you don’t update your iPod software, new songs purchased from the Apple music store might not play correctly. Hmm, didn’t know that, but I don’t own an iPod so why should have I? To me it seems kind of peculiar that that’s the case. Maybe it’s just the Apple store employee’s nice way of saying “you don’t know how to maintain your iPod, it’s all screwed up because of all the illegally downloaded half corrupt 64kbps crap you’ve been putting on it so now it needs to be reset.” That would be my guess. I didn’t realize it happened so often, there were literally a dozen people in there to get their stupid iPod’s settings reset and software updated. They, of course, didn’t pay anything for it, but I did - I paid by wasting two hours of my day waiting for their piddly little music players to get fixed, even though they could have just fixed them themselves if they’d had the capacity to try doing two minutes of their own troubleshooting..

But I don’t own an iPod, so maybe I shouldn’t criticize. Maybe they really are a pain to maintain, especially if it’s being connected to a Windows computer instead of a Mac computer, which was the case among most of those getting them fixed today. Considering I’ve been using Apple products so long and have only had basic hardware problems and never any software problems, I kind of doubt that it’s a problem with Apple’s software. It’s probably a problem with the user.

See-ya later.

Yikes! I almost forgot to write here tonight! Not that it would have been the end of the world if I hadn’t, I’m just trying to keep up with this thing for my own purposes. I don’t feel obligated to anyone but myself on this thing, really. So anyway, it’s been one of those days. When all the duties of the day were done - which were numerous and contained trace elements of joy & pleasure, similar to the way a can of Hormel chili contains a few roach whiskers - I came home and just took a long hard nap. Now I won’t get a normal night’s sleep tonight, but oh well.

Geeky web designer stuff alert! Simply close the browser window this page is contained within if you are too cool for this kind of stuff. Okay, bye. Now, for those of you still with me: I stumbled across a web site today that discussed the sins of web design, and I learned that I have committed some of them. Oh no! They covered things like using frames, which I agree shouldn’t be done anymore. If you used them correctly back when they were practical, they worked pretty well, in my opinion. I think the problem was that no one coded them correctly, which is why they failed.

Then they started bashing “splash pages.” Yeah, this site has one. It’s that first page with the little animation of my logo. Yes, I have pondered whether or not it’s really necessary. On some sites, it’s definitely not necessary - for example it’s obvious even to non-web designers that Target.com would not need a splash page. I agree with that, and I fully understand that some sites have as their purpose the maximum distribution of maximum information; they need to get it all out now, and fast. Well, dustinmarson.com is not one of those sites. I view the splash page as the front cover of a book, or better yet the overture. Something that provides a break from whatever you were doing before you took your seat. So I make no apologies for my “splash page.”

Some of the other ones were:
Pop up ads(*) - Like duh, everyone totally already knows that.
Being required to install extra software to view site content - Okay I don’t entirely agree on this one. Some of us like to use Flash because it’s a very powerful design element. Unfortunately there are many old fogies out there still running Windows 98 with Internet Explorer 1.0 and they need to know that my site’s a little too complex for them but I’d still like them to enjoy it. The web shouldn’t be stuck in 1995 because 5% of the internet population still is.
Dead links(*) - Yeah, they suck. I’m proud that I avoid them on my sites as much as possible.
Confusing navigation(*) - On large sites this is tough, because you have a billion things to navigate to but need to keep the navigation simple so it’s not too confusing. I guess finding the happy medium is what it’s all about.
Required registration to access content(*) - Yes, this bothers me very, very much. Why can’t I read the Washington Times article Joe Schmo linked to on his blog without typing in all my personal information so the paper can spam email the hell out of me?
Slow-loading pages(*) - Well, that’s where Flash comes in handy because it’s fast. But you have to download the plugin if you’re an old fogey. Sites that use humongous image maps are a little ridiculous.
Ineffective site search tools(*) - Yeah I love it when I go on to a site that sells ceramic collectible cows and type in “holstein” and end up getting redirected to a Google search listing links to other sites that contain news articles about mad cow disease. I just want to buy your freaking ceramic cows you silly people!
And then, as I already mentioned, frames(*) and splash pages.

The sins with a star (*) next to them are ones that the very site discussing the sins of web design is blatantly guilty of. And as you’ll see there are only two that they are not guilty of. The web site also happens to be butt-ugly, but the site does not consider butt ugliness a web design sin, apparently.

See-ya tomorrow or this weekend, or whenever I get around to posting next. Wear a coat, it’s cold outside.

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