joegratz.net

Mike Rowe is a 17-year-old high schooler from Canada who likes to program. He’s posted some of his programs on his web site, mikerowesoft.com. So Microsoft is getting ready to sue or UDRP him to take away his domain name. Fine. Microsoft is their trademark, and there are a dozen cases (at least in the U.S.) holding that there is a likelihood of confusion between sound-alikes and the real trademark. (E.g., if I call my soft drink Khokha Kholla, that’s confusingly similar to Coca-Cola.) They’ll sue or UDRP, he’ll raise the defense that it’s his own name forchrissakes, and the tribunal will decide one way or the other.

The real travesty here is that some key news outlets on intellectual property issues — Slashdot and the Register — haven’t mastered the rudimentary distinction between copyright law and trademark law. The Slashdot headline is “Microsoft to sue Mike Rowe for Copyrights”; The Register states that “The Beast of Redmond however reckons that the phonetic domain infringes its copyright and insists Mike hand it over or face the consequences.”

For those snoozing in the back: Trademarks are names or other signifiers used to indicate the origin of goods or services. Copyrights protect original works of authorship, and the copyright office has ruled that titles, company names, and short phrases are not eligible for copyright protection. Yes, there’s some overlap — companies can hold a copyright in their logo, for example, over which they also have trademark protection. But you can’t copyright your name (despite what some criminals with too much time on their hands think), and you can’t trademark the text of your novel.

The copyright industries’ “reeducation campaigns” are occasionally scary (e.g., encouraging kindergarteners to put a little (c) on their drawings). But I think even basic understanding of how IP laws work is too rare, and should be taught somewhere along the line. Maybe it can be part of the media literacy curriculum.