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Pokemon Gene Renamed Under Legal Threat

Posted by Zonk on Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:42 AM
from the tumor-i-choose-you dept.
Government The Courts Entertainment Games News Science
Gamasutra reports that the 'Pokemon' cancer-causing gene has been renamed after legal threats were made by Pokemon USA. From the article: "Scientific journal Nature reported that Pokémon USA, the subsidiary company of Nintendo established to control the Pokémon brand in America, threatened to sue the cancer research center on the understandable grounds that equating Pokémon with cancer was doing harm to the brand's image. Sloan-Kettering acquiesced to the company's demands and changed the gene's name to the more unobtrusive Zbtb7."
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  • COMPROMISE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mister_llah (891540) on Tuesday December 20 2005, @11:45AM (#14299341) Homepage Journal
    Call it Zbbt-achu!

  • ..called "Pokemon" in the first place. FP?

  • It's a slow news day everywhere, it seems. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sockatume (732728) on Tuesday December 20 2005, @11:48AM (#14299367) Homepage
    Researchers jokingly name gene after franchise. Franchise owners ask that they change it. Researchers change it. STOP THE PRESSES! [/sarcasm]. Yeah, I'm cranky. Caffiene withdrawal.

  • Cancermon! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bahumat (213955) on Tuesday December 20 2005, @11:55AM (#14299433) Homepage Journal
    /obligatory

    Cancermon! I choose you!

  • photosensitive epilepsy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by b1t r0t (216468) on Tuesday December 20 2005, @11:57AM (#14299442)
    However, further recent warnings on these Pokemon-related health problems have been tempered by the fact that Southern Medical Journal researchers discovered only a small fraction of the children treated were actually diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy.

    Well, duuuuuuh. In the original case in Japan, after watching the Porygon episode, schoolkids were basically told "if you felt sick after watching that episode last night, you can go home right now." If you were a schoolkid, in Japan or elsewhere, what would you do? It doesn't take a Bart Simpson to jump at the chance to play hooky and get away with it.

  • The obvious reasons (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The obvious reasons why Nintendo did this are:

    1) Pokemon is a trademark; if you allow anyone to use a trademark for any reason you risk loosing the trademark because it can become a generic term.

    2) The 'Pokemon' gene could cause a negative image of pokemon "my mother died of cancer because she caried the 'Pokemon-gene'!"

    • Re:The obvious reasons (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1) Pokemon is a trademark; if you allow anyone to use a trademark for any reason you risk loosing the trademark because it can become a generic term.

      Ref. Miller's Daughter the Queen v. Rumplestiltskin ?
    • Pokemon is sort of a generic term already. It is an abbreviation or if you will a mashup of Pocket Monsters.
    • if you allow anyone to use a trademark for any reason you risk loosing the trademark because it can become a generic term

      Not true. There has to be a likelihood of confusion or deception [uspto.gov]. But your reason number 2 may be valid. It's a grey area though -- whether just because it's a gene associated with cancer is enough to turn the case in Nintendo's favor is questionable. The added "fame" [uspto.gov] of the Pokemon trademark might be enough to throw the case into their favor though.

    • if you allow anyone to use a trademark for any reason you risk loosing the trademark

      LOSE is the opposite of GAIN.
      LOOSE is the opposite of TIGHT.

      You learned this in school, motherfucker. GET IT RIGHT.

      I'm really losing patience with this sort of shit, due to seeing the same moronic mistakes made over and over. How many goddamned times do people on SlashDot need to point out the difference between "lose" and "loose", or the difference between "it's" and "its", or the fact that "its'" (note trailing a

      • Good point. I don't mind abbreviations or intentional misspellings or slang or anything, but you'd think people would be smart enough to spell commonly used, everyday words correctly. My general philosophy is if you can read, you can spell...and if someone can't read, it makes you wonder what they're doing on SlashDot in the first place.

        • My general philosophy is if you can read, you can spell...and if someone can't read, it makes you wonder what they're doing on SlashDot in the first place.

          Probably goofing off on their job, which probably has something to do with Windows. Unix people, in general, seem to be MUCH more linguistically oriented. This isn't trolling, it's the truth. Unix's command-line-heavy nature means that to be truly proficient at operating Unix, you must by necessity be proficient at manipulating large strings of text. Th

      • Wow..

        das Fuhrer of grammar nazi's. /me goose steps.

        • So are you claiming that you've never produced a typo before?

          No, I'm not. However, the problem I was referring to was almost certainly not a typo. It was a symptom of a genuine inability to distinguish between "lose" and "loose".

          That on a web forum, where nearly no one actually even bothers to create comments using correct grammer or spelling, you're highly concerned that your sentences are correctly spelled?

          What's "grammer" [m-w.com]?

          You do realize that Mother Fucker is 2 words, one of which is not gramati

  • Wasn't there also a gene called 'Sonic Hedgehog' by the researchers? I don't recall anyone suing over that.
    • Sonic hedgehog is the name of a gene - it was named over a decade ago. It was called that because it was a new member of the 'hedgehog' family of genes. The only other gene name that has been changed after corporate intervention was a gene in the fruitfly that was called 'velcro' and was renamed 'puckered'. Fruitflies have a large number of whimsically named genes - my favourite (also a possible trademark violation) being 'Ken and Barbie' since flies lacking the gene have no external genitalia.

    • Here you go: Sonic Hedgehog [wikipedia.org].

    • Maybe the discoverers of Sonic Hedgehog didn't get sued because they were awarded the Nobel prize. Perhaps Sega felt that association with the Nobel prize was worth not suing.

  • Harm to the brand's image? (Score:3, Funny)

    by meanfriend (704312) on Tuesday December 20 2005, @12:08PM (#14299531)
    So naming a gene whose function that one in a thousand people couldnt even begin to describe is harming their image, but blackening the skies with lawyers over what most people would consider a non-issue doesnt?

    Nintendo should protect their brand, but come on. This 'intrusion' on thier namespace is pretty obscure. It's not as if the research facility is using the name to get grants or sell drugs.

    Personally I think it's cool. There is actually a gene named after Sonic the hedgehoge that has a role in developmental biology. I'd think that companies would be amused that they are being recognized in important scientific work.

    Of course the researchers backed down. They have far more important things to spend their money on than defending pointless lawsuits. They should have renamed the gene NLCBMSMA (Nintendo Lawyers Can Bite My Shiny Metal Ass) or would they have been sued by Fox instead?
    • There is actually a gene named after Sonic the hedgehoge that has a role in developmental biology. I'd think that companies would be amused that they are being recognized in important scientific work.

      And I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't have given a shit if not for the fact that this gene causes cancer.
    • ...they then discover a "fair and balanced" gene which only existed in right-handed DNA.

      Seriously, though, trademarks (supposedly) only apply if you've sufficient overlap to create the possibility of genuine confusion. I believe the burger chain lost its case against the McDonald clan, for example, and Apple Computers only escaped because they didn't (at the time) overlap in any way with Apple Music.

      Furthermore, "pokemon" (which translates to Pocket Monster) might not even be a valid trademark. If there was

      • So what you're saying is that the word "Pokémon" was used by our ancient ancestors?
        Just because it's a portmanteau of "pocket" and "monster" (the combination of which was rather unique at the time anyway), doesn't make it public domain.
        If it were, then pretty much EVERY trademark would be public domain.

  • I think the brand is very much defined already. Let's face it, Kids are the main consumer of this type of game and I know of several demented middle schoolers who would love owning a game that has a gene that causes cancer named after it. The parents might be afraid the game could cause cancer, and that the two are linked; BUT having that fear would require the parents actually knowing which games their kids play, AND the name of that specific gene.

    Then again, I am probably not giving credit too th

  • They should of called the new cancer gene 'Microsoft'. Perhaps it resulted in very micro and very soft cancer lumps, surely they could get away with it.

  • So they took a cancer on society and made it more personal. I bet if there was Pokemon in my body, I would feel the same way about it as I do about Pokemon here in the "outside" world. I call that proper name choice.
    Just to clear the air, I did work at a Wizards of the Coast retail store during the Pokemon card craze. And yes, the word Pikachu or whatever now does induce vomiting.

  • Good. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rainwalker (174354) <fex8wvp77e1001@s ... inus threevowels> on Tuesday December 20 2005, @12:57PM (#14299994)
    Good, there's nothing more annoying when reading literature than genes given "cute" names by researchers trying to be funny. Name it after the function, so we don't have to keep looking it back up! I'm all for using the courts to force researchers to name genes properly, dammit!
    • what else would you call the POK Erythroid Myeloid ONtogenic gene? The POK family of genes is well established in oncology, and wasn't made up just to make the acronym work. Names like that are much easier to comprehend than ZBTB7, like it was changed to due to the litigation.
  • They should be honored that Pokemon was chosen as a name. Naming new and increasingly harder to find genes and protiens after cartoon or video game characters is a recent but honored tradition in the scientific community. A tradition very similar to the compas system of naming electrophoretic blots. The lawyers have demonstrated their lack of vision and absolute cluelessness for a culture they could live 100 lifetimes and still not understand. Don't believe me? Just ask Sonic Hedghog. [lbl.gov]
    • "They should be honored that Pokemon was chosen as a name."

      Dude! CANCER! Radiation! Chemotherapy! Dying bald kids! Their name would be tied to fewer deaths if somebody built the Pokemon Death Camp!
  • Zbtb7!

    Now to add that to the checklist of Pokemon whose name is very hard or impossible to pronounce... Gotta love them Japanese folk.
  • I know bashing companies who resort to threatening with legal action is the 'in' thing with the slashdot crowd but come on, this is a cancer causing gene we're talking about here. It's pretty reasonable that a company would'nt want it's product linked to that (however annoying that product may be).
    The scientists that came up with the abbreviation thought they were being smart & funny and Nintendo thought otherwise.
    It's not like their legal actions are threatening scientific progress or freedom of expr
  • Nintendo is part owner of the Pokemon company, but it is not a true subsidiary, it's a joint venture owned by Nintendo and several other companies who had ownership interest in some facet of the franchise.
  • Ayds diet candy, anyone? Ayds diet chocolates help you lose wait. Get Ayds!

    If you get Ayds, you'll get lose weight and get slender!

  • In Soviet Russia, cancer gene names YOU "Pokemon"!

  • cancer research center on the understandable grounds that equating Pokémon with cancer was doing harm to the brand's image.


    Giving a "cute" name to an arbitrary gene is not equating the two.
    Is the trend of cutesy names a good idea? Probably not? Might joe
    six-pack not be able to differentiate between the two; using
    context or realizing that the world is not, in fact, black and white? Possibly.

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