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Nice article. It reminds me of a fight I had with Sun Computer (i.e. Sun Microsystems) some years ago, after I created a Web page that computed the sun's positi
by lutusp 13y ago
Nice article. It reminds me of a fight I had with Sun Computer (i.e. Sun Microsystems) some years ago, after I created a Web page that computed the sun's position / sunrise / sunset times for a given location (http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/sunrise http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/sunrise). Without thinking very deeply, I named my page "Sun Computer".
Pretty soon, and without any nefarious intent on my part, my "Sun Computer" Web page ascended above the official "Sun Computer" corporate website in the search engine listings.
Shortly thereafter I received a registered letter from a team of corporate lawyers who threatened to sue me for disregarding Sun's proprietary ownership of the word "Sun". My explanation that there is an astronomical body with that same name, and that my page provided information about said astronomical entity, fell on deaf ears.
For some reason, the corporate lawyers couldn't bring themselves to simply say that my Web page was above theirs in the search rankings and I needed to do something about it. Instead, the correspondence was phrased entirely in threatening legalese, in terms of proprietary trademarks and public deceit. I finally figured out what the problem was, and renamed my page "Solar Computer". Problem solved.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rtfeldman 13y agoReminds me of the nissan.com story. I wonder if that would have ended as quietly for them if they'd taken the same approach.
- dmdeller 13y agoPresumably you are referring to the former Sun Microsystems. The amusing thing to me about this story is that it's such a convoluted name that their own potential customers apparently can't remember it. And so, attempting to locate the computer company, they type the closest approximation they can manage, 'Sun Computer', into Google, which likely didn't rank as highly as yours precisely because that verbatim phrase, being technically incorrect, is unlikely to appear directly on their own web site or in anyone else's links to their web site. Names matter.
- lutusp 13y ago> Presumably you are referring to the former Sun Microsystems. Yes, that's one of the ironies -- Sun Microsystems argued that my use of the phrase "Sun Computer" directly interfered with their legitimate commercial interest. And, based on the search engine rankings, they were right.
- malandrew 13y agoWhat I don't get it why society thinks it's okay to encroach on personal freedoms when it hurts the economic interests of some other party. What is it about economic/commercial/financial interests that we collectively consider it more moral.
- sliverstorm 13y agoNames matter, and you often wind up stuck with the one you started with. There's tons of examples of companies that found themselves there, and that's where you start getting acronyms ala HP, AMD, TI, AT&T, etc. That said, names don't matter more than your product. Pick a good name, but remember to put your products first...
- dmdeller 13y ago> Names matter, and you often wind up stuck with the one you started with. Not just names--companies often wind up stuck with lots of things they started with, and there's no reason for it other than inertia. A well-known counter example, of course, being the company formerly known as Apple Computer, who changed their name after 30 years of being in business. Point being, Sun would not have been harmed by changing or dropping the 'microsystems' part of the name, which is a silly made-up word that didn't even represent their actual business (software, and physically large servers/workstations). It just never occurred to anyone, or the bureaucracy kept it from happening.
- marcosdumay 13y agoIt's not a made-up word. It was the name of the computers small enough to put in your room when Sun started. What makes your point much more evident, they should have changed it when everybody stopped using the word.
- shabble 13y agoThey got into an utterly pointless fight with Sparkfun Electronics[1] which took some minor Streislanding by The Internet to resolve. I suspect even in-house legal depts think in terms of billable hours... [1] https://www.sparkfun.com/news/300 https://www.sparkfun.com/news/300
- lutusp 13y ago> ... which took some minor Streislanding by The Internet to resolve. Minor quibble. I think you mean "Streisanding", i.e. referring to the Streisand Effect.
- EvanAnderson 13y agoAll I can think of is a bit of old Internet humor: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~jon/humor/ha/java.html http://www.csh.rit.edu/~jon/humor/ha/java.html