IS THERE nothing left in this world that can’t be patented, copyrighted or
trademarked? The latest move in the stampede to slap intellectual property
rights on everything that exists is the attempt to register trademarks on words
that are already in everyday use.
For example, a California company called Fandom has applied to the US Patent
and Trademark Office for a trademark on the word “fandom” for its online
entertainment and information service. The application claims that the first use
of the word in business was in 1999. That comes as a big surprise to
science-fiction fans, who’ve been using “fandom” to describe their community for
decades—as in the popular phrase “fandom is a way of life”.
Some of these surprising applications even succeed. If you check the database
of US trademark applications at http://tarr.uspto.gov/ you’ll find that
registration number 2347676 refers to the :-( “emoticon” for an unhappy
face.
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Who would want to register something like that? It’s a company called Despair
at www.despair.com, which at first glance looks like just another Internet
start-up. But take a closer look and you’ll notice it satirises targets such as
trademark-happy corporations.
In one “press release”, Despair announces: “The company has, through the use
of the FBI’s controversial new `Carnivore’ Internet wiretapping system,
surreptitiously monitored unencrypted Internet e-mail and compiled a list of
over 7,000,000 individuals who have used the :-( emoticon.” The release goes on
to claim that Despair has petitioned a court to require these trademark
infringers “to submit a handwritten letter which repeats the phrase `:-( is a
registered trademark of Despair’ one thousand times”.
±ᴡ’S the longest it’s ever taken an e-mail to reach you? Justin
Neville-Rolfe tells us of a colleague who received an e-mail from her boyfriend
saying, “I’m working late and can’t make dinner.”
She was confused because they hadn’t planned to eat together that night. Then
she noticed that the e-mail came from his old workplace. It had been sent in
June 2000 and only arrived in January this year, taking more than six months to
travel the 25 kilometres from Watford to central London. Neville-Rolfe
calculates that this is under 2 millimetres per second—approximately the
speed of a garden snail.
Surely that’s a record? Well, not quite. John Chapman of Perth, Australia,
reports that on 26 January he received an e-mail from Taiwan that was sent on 27
August 1998. Now that’s what we call snail mail. But maybe readers have had
e-mails that took longer still?
ARCHAEOLOGISTS don’t just dig, they date. Once they’ve dug up something, the
big questions are: “What is it?” and: “How old is it?”
Pinning down the age of ancient objects remains an inexact science, of
course. Even the most advanced tests give only a rough estimate. Yet you can’t
help feeling that events which occurred in researchers’ own lifetimes could be
dated much more accurately.
You’d be wrong. Fifteen stone heads unearthed at Cyrene, Libya, have been
stolen from the University of Pennsylvania’s expedition storeroom. All the heads
had been assigned rough dates, from late Classical to early second century AD.
But the theft itself? That occurred “in late 1999 or early in 2000”, says the
report in Archaeology.
Although the thieves haven’t been caught, the good news is that two of the
stone heads have been recovered. The rest are still missing, but you can see
what they look like at www.cyrenethefts.org. Maybe one of them has turned up in
your garden?
IT APPEARS that price-comparison website kelkoo.com is on the verge of
pioneering some sort of time travel. Here is what people entering its recent
prize draw were told: “Thank you for entering the kelkoo.com prize draw for a
chance to win one of 10,000 kelkoo clubbing cards.
“The prize draw will take place on 28 February 2001 and winners will be
notified by 5 January 2001.”
WE HESITATE to make fun of mistakes made by British Telecom because it makes
so many. But we can’t resist this one.
BT wanted us all to get excited about a new range of digital cordless phones
that come in different colours. Ho hum.
The announcement arrived by e-mail, topped and tailed with hundreds of other
recipients’ private e-mail addresses. Evidently telecoms specialist BT has not
yet learned enough about e-mail to hide the addresses of other recipients by
sending multiple messages as “BCC” blind copies.
And the e-mail heading?
“Exiting (sic) new releases from BT.”
FINALLY, South African reader Johan Jansen van Rensburg tells us that his can
of Dyroach aerosol insecticide has a warning that states: “Keep out of reach of
children, uninformed people and animals.”
To be on the safe side, van Rensburg says he always reads the newspaper
before touching the can.
