This got quite a lot of discussion or reddit the other day and someone supplied a link to term used in fiction from the 30's. it predates this company by about 50 years.
The problem is not prior art, but the descriptive or generic nature of the term.
Just because there's a software company selling music or even a music label with trademarks on 'Apple' doesn't mean I cannot call a song about apples 'Apple Song'. See the case cited in section b of [1] as to why 'space marine' might not be the best choice if you want to put a trademark on a book's title.
'Prior art' is helpful insofar as it establishes the nature of the term in question. The term 'space marine' is not as widely used as I initially believed (eg it's neither used in Starship Troopers nor Aliens, and might not be in Starcraft - did not verify with the game itself and online sources are ambiguous).
However, it can still be found in a lot of places:
Misfit by Heinlein, Grayson Space Marine Corps in David Weber's Honorverse, Doomguy and the Quake marines, the Star Blazers TV series, Death of the Daleks, the movie 'Space Marines' from 1997, Colonel Scott of the US Space Marines from Moonraker, to name the ones I could come up with.
Using the term inside a work might be less dangerous than using it in the title. IANAL, but GW might be able to argue that using it in a title is going to trick consumers into think it is an officially sanctioned GW book.
""" Noting the inherent weakness of plaintiff's title, the court commented that the words chosen by Random House [the defendant] were an apt description of its book, and therefore in the public domain. Rejecting plaintiff's unfair competition claim, the court further noted that because of the weakness of plaintiff's title, combined with the differences in the overall look and feel of the two books (including Random House's prominent use of its distinctive logo on the spine and back jacket) there was no likelihood of confusion. McGraw-Hill Book Company v. Random House, Inc., 32 Misc. 2nd 704, 225 N.Y.S.2d 646, 132 U.S.P.Q. 530 (1962). """
> Its trademark claim covers the use of the word in connection with many aspects of tabletop gaming and video games, she said, but also extended to published works.
One should note that they claim trademark by 'common law', ie they argue that the association of the term 'Space Marine' with Warhammer 40k is so well-established even in the realm of ebooks that they own a de-facto trademark without having a registration (yet).
Basically, GW is the largest fish in their pond. They are trying to expand into a bigger one and are testing the waters by eating their first small fish.
That is unlikely. What is more likely — as there is significant historical evidence of it — is that GW has a legal department entirely run and staffed by the closest equivalent to ghouls we have.
>There's no reason to expect that the people currently employed at Games Workshop know that the company had borrowed the term in the first place.
You say that like sticking two generic words next to each other is somehow novel or noteworthy. I wouldn't call it borrowing or infringing when the thing in question is utterly mundane.
Thanks for the clarification. I haven't seen the trilogy in a while and couldn't recall for sure. I did a quick search online and saw references that said "space marine" and also "colonial marine" so I figured it might have referenced in the movie.
I've heard of it, but knew nothing about it. There's a long list of space marines in fiction I would have pointed out before someone pointed out that this franchise also has them.
I play a lot of computer games and have heard of Warhammer 40,000. I have never heard the phrase "Space Marine" in relation to Warhammer though. No doubt if you play the game it's impossible not to, but expecting people to be familiar with Warhammer AND know that they use Space Marine seems folly. Especially since it sounds pretty generic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_marine
I've already gotten rid of the Metro start menu[1] (this is a dual screen desktop), and I've been very pleased with the results. Windows 8 is unsurprisingly superior at working out of the box with drivers, which I've enjoyed. I can't say it's worth that much of an upgrade though. I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to buy it.
I can only imagine how pissed someone would be when they accidentally touch their phone or tablet with the wrong end of the Sharpie. Would rather put it on an actual pen than a permanent marker. Seems way too easy to make that mistake, since the ends even look fairly alike.
By the by, Sharpies are pens? Is it like one of those "all squares are rectangles" things?
Exactly what I was thinking. If you forget to put the cap back on your Sharpie, you suddenly have a nice black line on the screen of your brand new iPad Mini.
Luckily, markers are not permanent on glass. Some glass cleaner or even regular rubbing alcohol will clean it off. Now if you have a screen protector, all bets are off...
It seems to me like having a screen protector should be the best case. Isn't this the sort of thing they are for? Peal it off and stick a new one on; much easier than scrubbing down your screen.
Possibly. In my experience, screen protectors are fiddly to put on, and when I had one I never wanted to have to replace it. Far too easy to get bubbles. There's also some amount of cost involved in replacing it, no matter how small. Rubbing alcohol is just something you typically have lying around your house, the marginal cost is less than a penny. A quick wipe with an alcohol-moistened tissue is all it takes.
Hmm. Maybe they should make screen protectors with built in screen protector protectors. Each time something gets messed up you just peal off one of the several layers, like some sort of flaky biscuit of screen protection. :)
Document formats don't seem to be a problem any more. Back when MS switched to .docx people I knew continued using .doc to maintain compatibilty with old versions. I actually got support for the 2007 formats before most of my windows using friends. As long as you change your default file format to the MS one, I don't think you'll run into issues on that front.
