Atari Targets Retro Community With Cease & Desist 219
svenski writes "Atari User reports that Atari Inc. have begun to target the retro community and have now turned their attentions to atari2600.org, a website first registered in 2000, demanding the domain name be handed over."
Trademark Dilution (Score:4, Interesting)
Eleven years of no enforcement means they effectively gave up all rights to the name. See you in court, Atari.
He's right. It's called "Estoppel" (Score:4, Insightful)
Trademarks are special in that you lose them if you don't enforce them. That's not the case with copyrights, patents or trade secrets. If you don't defend your trademark, then the law holds that your mark becomes part of the language, so that you don't own it anymore.
I learned of this when Saks 41st Avenue sent a C&D letter to a small clothing store called Sacks 41st Avenue in Capitola, California. It made the front page of the local paper. Saks' attorney told the reporter who asked about it that they had to defend their trademark or they would lose it.
The problem though is that whoever administers the domain name dispute resolution policy may not apply the trademark law. It is possible that Atari could take the domain because they registered their trademark before the website registered their domain. Because their trademark is no longer enforceable, they have no rights to the domain, but ICANN may not heed that fact and so force the register to hand the domain over to Atari.
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Re:He's right. It's called "Estoppel" (Score:5, Informative)
Whole lotta content [archive.org] there....
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Because their trademark is no longer enforceable, they have no rights to the domain, but ICANN may not heed that fact and so force the register to hand the domain over to Atari.
They're not supposed to according to the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy [icann.org]:
All registrars must follow the the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (often referred to as the "UDRP"). Under the policy, most types of trademark-based domain-name disputes must be resolved by agreement, court action, or arbitration before a registrar will cancel, suspend, or transfer a domain name. Disputes alleged to arise from abusive registrations of domain names (for example, cybersquatting) may be addressed by expedited administrative proceedings that the holder of trademark rights initiates by filing a complaint with an approved dispute-resolution service provider.
To invoke the policy, a trademark owner should either (a) file a complaint in a court of proper jurisdiction against the domain-name holder (or where appropriate an in-rem action concerning the domain name) or (b) in cases of abusive registration submit a complaint to an approved dispute-resolution service provider (see below for a list and links).
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Eleven years of no enforcement means they effectively gave up all rights to the name. See you in court, Atari.
We have more money and lawyers than you. If it goes to court we will bankrupt you even if you win. - Atari lawyer. (Probably not said directly, but implied.)
Is this what it has come down to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is this what it has come down to? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this what it has come down to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny thing is, Apple is doing it wrong, literally. No patent troll sues to keep a product off the market - you have to wait until the product is wildly successful, perhaps close to the end of the patent term, THEN you sue for massive damages. Plus, Apple is filing everywhere but East Texas, sheesh. Everyone knows you use East Texas to make life easy.
Suing to keep a product off the market means you give up whatever profits you could've made had that product been successful.
Re:Is this what it has come down to? (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent trolls don't generally have a competing product. The amount of money that Apple stands to gain by having a competitor locked out of the market is likely to be a lot more than what they can reasonably collect if they win a later patent case.
But more importantly, it keeps competitors out of the minds of possible consumers.
Re:Is this what it has come down to? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd argue that trolling as a business model is nastier, in that it usually manifests as a fishing with dynamite approach. But I could certainly be wrong.
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I'd argue that trolling as a business model is nastier.
That's like saying you'd like to be just killed, as opposed to being raped and killed.
The analogy's a bit extreme, but that's effectively what patent trolls and patent aggressors (and arguably abusers) like Apple are doing; Apple's using their patents to kill any and all potential competitors, and patent trolls are raping the industry first before killing the product. A big company might shell out the extra cost of the "license" to a patent troll, but a smaller company has no chance.
In my book, both are wro
They're trying to keep devs of the Android platfor (Score:2)
-m.
I've been working on an iOS app for a while. While Objective-C and Cocoa Touch are pretty nice to work with, I am sick to death of Apple's corporate control freak mentality. The fact that I cannot run code I wrote myself on an iOS device I bought with my own cash is, frankly, offensive.
Now I can pay $99 to be an iOS developer, which gives me a digital certificate that allows me to load my own binaries on my devices. I can also get certificates that allow for Ad Hoc distribution on other devices for be
That's Just Right. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing the point -- Apple wants to sell the thing that always works. Keeping things pinned down minimises crashes. Minimising crashes means higher user satisfaction, which builds the brand.
User freedom is also known as "enough rope to hang yourself".
Apple have been very clever and relied on the "appstore goldrush" to ensure that millions of different app developers can produce enough to satisfy the hundreds of significant use-cases of the phone. The ecosystem is saturated, so the loss of a few is no problem at all.
You're not serious, are you? The iOS is WAY buggy (Score:2)
I've reported lots of iOS bugs to Apple.
I even had my iPhone kernel panic right at the start of a demo of my app during a job interview. I had to forcibly reboot my phone while the clients waited impatiently. They cut the interview short and would not let me complete my demo, no doubt thinking that the kernel panic was a bug in my userspace app.
I am not at all impressed by the quality of the apps that I've downloaded from the App Store, not even the ones I've paid money for. Even if you don't have an iOS
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That's because all the rich craftsmen can afford better tools. /ducks
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Their problem is that they have limited the use cases to those where a developer can afford to write the effort off if their app gets rejected for some arbitrary and never disclosed reason.
As the market settles out a bit and the novelty comes off of the iJesus, that will likely weigh against them.
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I'll develop for iOS if a client pays me to do it, but for all of my own titles, I'm going to focus on Android.
Here's a sample of letters you might get:
Dear Mr. Crawford,
I want to try your application, but I don't plan to subscribe to smartphone service. My current dumbphone with $5/mo Virgin Mobile USA service handles my mobile voice needs acceptably. If you ported your application to iOS, I could use it on an iPod touch. But as it is now, there really isn't an Android device comparable to the iPod touch, namely a pocket-size computer with access to the platform's most popular software distribution platform and w
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There are more Android devices sold than iOs devices. I don't see how it is to my advantage to stay with a platform that is losing market share. Maybe there is no Android answer to the iPod Touch, but I don't expect things will stay that way.
Devices purchased as gifts for children (Score:2)
There are more Android devices sold than iOs devices.
This is true of phones, but is it true of the Wi-Fi-only device that a mom is likely to buy for her children? An iPod touch competes more with a Nintendo DSi: something on which to play games and music, possibly carried along with a separate dumbphone on the cheapest available prepaid plan that lets the child call home in an urgency.
Maybe there is no Android answer to the iPod Touch, but I don't expect things will stay that way.
Then in what quarter of what year do you expect the Galaxy Player, or Galaxy S Wi-Fi, or whatever Samsung is calling it nowadays, to become widely available in the United States
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There are Android phones available that are as cheap as the iPod Touch (if not quite as capable) and can be used on PAYG. This is especially true in countries other than the US with decent mobile providers.
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The Archos 43 doesn't have Android Market
Nokia N800, a half-decade old, can boot Android
Just because a device "can boot Android" doesn't mean it has access to applications that are exclusive to Android Market. Every iPT has the App Store; few pocket-size devices priced for sale in the United States without an expensive voice and data contract have Android Market.
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Now now...
You think the lawyers' private jets are going to pay for themselves?
Because... because... (Score:3)
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Fight them. (Score:2)
They can't steal atari2600.org just because they feel like it's theirs. Make them take it to arbitration [icann.org], they have no case.
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Except that ICANN has to abide by rulings made by courts in the US. Atari has no obligation to take it to arbitration since there is no licensing deal that mandates arbitration.
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Except that ICANN has to abide by rulings made by courts in the US.
That's nice, but ICANN has no authority over it; that all rests with the domain registrar. So it will depend on which country the registrar is located in.
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Unfortunately they can. Fighting Atari would require the hobbiest to show up in court halfway around the world. He can't do that, so Atari can do whatever they want.
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Fighting Atari would require the hobbiest
Fortunately you don't have to be the hobbiest, just hobbier than the next hobbyist.
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Atari? (Score:2)
Do they still exist? I thought they went bust decades ago.
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Actually, they do have all of Atari, by way of JT Storage (who bought the hardware side of Atari) and Hasbro, who bought the software side, and then also the hardware side from JTS when they went bankrupt, then got bought by Infogrammes.
Probably no employees from the original left though.
The arcade side (Score:2)
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Actually, they do have all of Atari, by way of JT Storage (who bought the hardware side of Atari) and Hasbro, who bought the software side, and then also the hardware side from JTS when they went bankrupt
You've got that half right, which is to say... sort of wrong. (^_^)
Although Atari *was* split in 1984- this wasn't between the "software" and "hardware" sides, but between the arcade division (Atari Games, later sold to Midway) and the console and home computer division (which became Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp.).
Atari Corp. was the one that merged with JTS in the mid-90s, and apparently they laid off almost all the former Atari Corp. employees shortly afterwards anyway. (Which was probably the intention
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Which, frankly, was completely backwards. They threw away a name with a reputation for some good, modern games (Alone in the Dark, Outcast, Unreal, Slave Zero, Expendable, Driver, Test Drive, Moto Racer, Demolition Racer)... and replaced it with the name of a long dead entity.
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"Estoppel Defense" (Score:5, Insightful)
i've just written this to the blog-writer: Please use the "Estoppel" Legal Defense. There's no way that Atari have not known of the existence for 12 years of the atari2600.org domain name.
The "Estoppel" defense states that if you ignore something, it is tantamount to "acquiescence" - i.e. "silent consent".
thus it can be claimed that Atari has "Silently Consented" to the use of this domain name, by virtue of them not having done anything for well over a decade.
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Any the details of your legal education are... what exactly?
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Which, in turn, will continue to teach companies that they're fools not to sue everyone immediately for every little possible violation.
The law of unintended consequences is indeed a bitch.
Idea! (Score:2, Funny)
I'll start a company called "www." and then sue every website in the world which has my name in its entirety in its website address.
Profits!
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Someone already beat you to it. www.www.com
Sue them twice
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Actually, it looks like there's a http://www.com/ [www.com] as well.
I think someone already thought of this. You're going to have a heck of a time in court. I would suggest incorporating "W", and then just sue everyone three times over.
Assign Rights to Nolan Bushnell (Score:3)
Sure... some MBA lawyer douchebag ressurects the name Atari to make money off the Atari fanboys, and then proceeds to shit all over the exact fanbase he hopes to profit from. I assume this guy used to work at Sony?
I say we go out and register ATARI*****.com (replace asteriks with whatever suits your fancy), and under contact info assign all rights to Nolan Bushnell.
Let's see how smart these douches are.
Re:Assign Rights to Nolan Bushnell (Score:5, Informative)
Atarisucks.com is already taken :(
It redirects to their website.
Well, we can do what Emannuel did (Score:2)
atariREALLYSUCKS.com
Ford missed it.
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Considering he probably had a hand in this I am sure he would figure it out. He is on their board of directors...
Yeah, this "OMG, Atari are being dicks and s******g on people's nostalgia" thing is ironic. From what I've heard, Atari were just as much dicks in their heyday as well, so the new holders of the name are simply continuing that, er... fine tradition!
I'm shocked and insulted (Score:3)
Is this a real site? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm assuming the stuff he removed infringed Atari copyrights.
That would be a bad assumption. The stuff he removed was just demos that run on Atari hardware. That doesn't infringe on any of Atari's rights any more than Firefox infringes on Microsoft's rights. Atari falsely claimed rights to his demos, and he took them down rather than fight a behemoth.
It's even worse than you think! (Score:4, Informative)
They're also sending letters to any hobbyist showing an Atari logo... even in a demo scene production.
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/186151-ive-got-email-from-atari-today/
Fujifilm (Score:2)
Another case where estoppal applies - they've let homebrewers use the fuji logo for decades now without a single takedown notice.
Which makes me think about another subtle method of protest: Write "Atari" in the font of the logo of Fujifilm [wikipedia.org]. "Can't use your Fuji? We'll use another Fuji."
Obviously a sign they're bringing back the Jaguar (Score:4, Funny)
Nintendo, Sony, MS--they've all had their heydeys. But the next generation will be ruled by the Atari Jaguar Series 2. They're going to launch with new versions of "Adventure" and "Combat" that will make everyone who even sees the trailers orgasm uncontrollably. You heard it here first.
Rewarding laziness (Score:2)
Such long copyrights and brand names being traded around is pure laziness. The people buying brands and capitalising on IP created nearly 30 years ago.
Personally I see that there's a case for having all patents, copyright and other IP die with the company when they go bust. It offers an incentive to be creative and not take massive risks.
The actual company doesn't exist any more.... (Score:2)
Unless the brand has changed hands again, it's just that, a brand name only, in the hands of a French [queue nationalist jokes] game publisher named Infogrames. The name "Atari" has been just as meaningless as "Memorex" for quite a long time.
.org TLD history? (Score:3)
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Anyone has been able to register any domain (.com, .org, .net) since the mid/late-1990s. I don't think there was ever any real enforcement on the whole "com for commercial, org for organizations, net for networks" thing.
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There was no "enforcement", but at a time it was against convention, and it's still against convention and policy for the .ORG TLD, that an ORG domain be registered and utilized for a commercial web site.
11 years too late (Score:2)
Laches, Daddy (Score:2)
Laches is the legal term for sitting on your ass while your rights are being violated. After too much ass-sitting, you'll be equitably estopped from asserting any legal rights that you had.
Add Atari to my do not buy list.
Funny (Score:2)
I find it interesting that they targeted a barely used domain instead of going after http://www.atari2600.com/ [atari2600.com] which actually sells merchandise or http://www.atariage.com/ [atariage.com] my guess is that they're going after the low-hanging fruit first.
The Obvious Question (Score:2)
Atari still exists?
21st century SEO (Score:2)
This another example of 21st century SEO created by the DMCA.
If you search Google for Atari,. their mark, there are a bunch of pages that show up on Google search that are not Atari.com. I'll bet that totally pisses off their marketing/sales department, esp. so they send their legal folks off to "fix it at all costs"
IOW.... possibly PR / "marketing effort" in preparation for new products.
How long before companies start threatening to sue people for sending Tweets or status updates with their com
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because some quasi-develepor exec probably sold them on the idea that their decades-old intellectual property could become sellable again on the mobile/embedded platform market but first they need to kill off the community that formed around these games?
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, if she likes zombie movies, some co-op L4D2.
You got limited vision, my man.
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Fuck first, then Pong. If she calls you the next day start looking for a chapel.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
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Her stage name is Madame Palm and her Five Lovely Daughters.
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Her stage name is Madame Palm and her Five Lovely Daughters.
But you also have to do that fat, stubby, short one on the end as well...
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Because some quasi-develepor exec probably sold them on the idea that their decades-old intellectual property could become sellable again on the mobile/embedded platform market but first they need to kill off the community that formed around these games?
The chance that they could monetize this stuff is pretty much zero. Most 2600 games were bloody awful and people who have the need to play them for nostalgia can easily obtain roms and perfect emulators from numerous places already.
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can easily obtain roms and perfect emulators from numerous places already.
which is why they are (futily) attempting to those down.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the crazy thing. Infogrames took the Atari name, presumably to capitalize on people's good memories. Now they are attacking the very people trying the hardest to keep those memories alive. This makes no business sense whatsoever.
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That's the crazy thing. Infogrames took the Atari name, presumably to capitalize on people's good memories.
According to what I heard when I worked there, they originally bought the Atari name as something of a job lot of IP, they didn't really want it. Then, they went on a 12 month marketing blitz in the US, to push the Infogrames name into more than just the hard-core gamer niche. After that, they did some surveys, and found that more people knew of a 10 year dead company than one that was trying to shove their name right in front of them at the time. So they said, "Fuck it", and started using the Atari name. A
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Because some quasi-develepor exec probably sold them on the idea that their decades-old intellectual property could become sellable again on the mobile/embedded platform market but first they need to kill off the community that formed around these games?
Maybe I'm just talking out of my rear here but it may be an 'enforce the trademark' issue.
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Oh man GORF on the iphone? I'd pay $80.00 for that!
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Why bother?
Looks like they are trying to resurrect the brand using flash and possibly other distribution channels.. See HERE [atari.com] for an example. When I tried to play Asteroids, it took me to my facebook page and asked for permission... I said no.
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When I tried to play Asteroids, it took me to my facebook page and asked for permission... I said no.
I'm disappointed in myself. I actually didn't immediately think that this is one of the things they would do. Ugh. How could I not?
Thanks for the info. This will be passed around at work tomorrow, dat's fer sher.
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Net earnings went down; one of the corp. heads had a magic idea that's worked for other companies in the past... That idea was astounding and looked like it would be the coolest thing ever. The idea was...... ------^ ;)
Re:Shoot in the foot (Score:4, Insightful)
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citation needed. I bought both witcher and witcher 2 off GoG with no DRM of any kind.
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Did you buy it on Steam or GOG? http://www.gog.com/en/support/the_witcher_2/_b_product_faq_b_ [gog.com]
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I don't believe so, no. I'm pretty sure it's an AT&T deal. the original company fell on hard times, but still had a valuable name. they were bought out by another company that was doing well (in AT&T's case, it was ironically bought out by a baby bell that had been shed off of itself 15 or 20 years prior), and the purchasing company says "your name is more famous than ours. we're you now."
It's essentially killing the celebrity and wearing his skin as a coat, buffalo bill style.
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a french company formerly known as Infogrames. They purchased Atari, sat on it for a while, realized "Nobody's ever heard of Infogrames," and changed their name.
That was, I believe, in the early 2000's. I worked for Atari briefly in 2003 and got the impression that the name change was fairly recent.
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To be fair, back in the day, Infogrames were a popular (in europe) software house who did some very good 8-bit games. I saw the takeover as more of a rebranding exercise than anything else.
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Heh... I'd heard about Infogrames... They were one of the good companies in the 8-bit era and had produced some of the classics from the DOS days of the PC era.
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I worked for Atari briefly in 2003 and got the impression that the name change was fairly recent.
Yeah, Wikipedia says Infogrames got it in 2001 which sounds about right.
Short summary....
* Original Atari Inc. split in 1984 into arcade (Atari Games) and home/computer (Atari Corp.).
* Atari Corp. fizzles out in mid-90s and merges with crappy hard drive maker JTS (effectively winding up Atari Corp.)
* Hasbro buy dormant Atari Corp's rights when JTS goes bankrupt in late-90s.
* Infogrames buy Hasbro's video game division along with Atari IP circa 2001.
* Infogrames renames itself "Atari" shortly afterwa
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I think you meant Buffalo Bob. Buffalo Bill was a western show star and celebrity, Buffalo Bob was played by the guy that plays Captain Stottlemeyer on Monk, Ted Levine!
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After all Atari didn't exist for a lot of years. Isn't there some expiration of a trademark when it's not defended for some number (11, in this case) years?
Er, except that you're wrong. The "Atari" brand *has* been used almost continuously in one form or another.
There was the original Atari Inc., later bought by Warner.
In 1984 it was effectively split into Atari Games (arcade) and what became Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp. (home computers and consoles). Atari Corp. continued for over a decade using that name before it eventually fizzled out and merged with JTS (a third-rate hard drive manufacturer) in 1996.
When JTS/Atari Corp. went under in 1998, Hasbro's vi
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I guess companies can register a trademark, *then* go after persons that have used the name?
After all Atari didn't exist for a lot of years.
The whole reason trademarks exist is to prevent consumer confusion.
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Boycotts work in this day and age? That's news to me. Sony took little to no damage from boycotts over their sneaky DRM inserted into music CDs. They did take a lot of damage when people were unable to use their PS3 due to hacking. The general result is left as an exercise to the reader.
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I have already boycotted all games produced and published by Atari for all sorts of reasons, this crap just makes me even LESS likely to buy from them.
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Eh...if these companies are going to be like this, then the current owners should just turn the sites into something completly unrelated and undesirable to the company before they get them. For example...I would totally turn the site into a pron site of some kind before they could get their hands on it. Then see how hard they battle for it in court and see how much they want it after is been marred.
Well, yeah, it's easy to play Internet-Legal-Tough-Guy. I'd like to see you try that one in real life though.
Am I right in guessing that you're going to try to claim that your use of the trademark is in an unrelated field and you'll somehow get away with it because of that? Because my gut reaction is the fact that until recently the domain/brand clearly *was* associated with an infringing usage and also, I don't know what the legal term for a spoilin
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You're venting at the wrong company. The Atari that actually created all those wonderful games, consoles and computers died a long time ago. The litigious company in question only has it's name.