IMAX Threatens Open Source 3D Engine With Bizarre Reasoning
from the say-what-now dept
Proffer alerts us to the bizarre story of how IMAX (last seen suing competitors and misleading people about what an IMAX film really is) is now threatening the folks behind the Sandy3D open source 3D flash engine. Apparently, IMAX has some sort of 3D drawing system called SANDDE. So, maybe, if you squint, you could see how IMAX might be complaining about a trademark issue. But the letter from IMAX is quite odd. It doesn’t mention trademark at all. Instead, it mentions a French patent.
This is quite odd, considering that there’s clearly no patent issue here (beyond the fact that Sandy3D isn’t in France and the products are entirely different). So why isn’t IMAX talking trademark? Well, perhaps because IMAX’s trademark on SANDDE was considered abandoned as of March 8, 2000. Yes, more than ten years ago. There’s also the fact that this open source project is not a commercial endeavor at all, meaning that IMAX might have a lot of trouble proving “use in commerce” even if it actually had a trademark. Perhaps IMAX could get away with claiming a common law trademark, but even then, its ability to do anything to Sandy3D would be quite limited, and it’s difficult to see anyone finding a likelihood of confusion existing between the two.
In the end, it looks like some IMAX lawyers decided to just threaten these open source developers, hoping that by spewing some totally unrelated info about a patent, it might scare the developers into changing the name on a product, even though the patent has nothing at all to do with the issue, and the company has no registered trademark on the name in question.
Filed Under: 3d, imax, patents, threats, trademarks
Companies: imax
Comments on “IMAX Threatens Open Source 3D Engine With Bizarre Reasoning”
its the lawyers
simple really, the lawyers need to keep themselves busy so they can justify their salaries. Since they couldn’t find anything that actually made sense, they just went on a bender and started this.
Re: its the lawyers
Well then, the solution is simple as well. Just make it so that any time a lawsuit is filed, the lawyers must state, under penalty of perjury, that they are filing in good conscience. Then, when these ridiculous lawsuits come up that any unbiased lawyer with a brain would see was winnable if it ever came to trial, enforce that penalty. You end up with a bunch of overly-litigious lawyers in disbarred and behind bars. Problem solved, right?
Re: Re: its the lawyers
Same AC here. winnable->unwinnable. Stupid lack of proofreading 🙁
Re: its the lawyers
Sadly this is probabbly the most logical reason for what’s happening.
There needs to be a quota for law students. Only x amount (hopefully a low number) of lawyers can be produced. This is basically how you control animal populations, )though animal control also includes hunting…).
Anyway, with less lawyers, there’ll be more work for each lawyer, and thus less need to “create work” . That would stop stuff like this from ever happening.
Re: Re:
That’s the purpose of state bar associations, unfortunately they have not been doing their jobs as of late.
Re: Re:
Ya know, it would be even more effective if a lawyer hunting season were implemented…
Re: Re: Re:
I’m in.
Re: Re:
Well, limiting supply could also simply drive up the price of lawyers(and thus create even larger incentives for lawyers to find more reasons for lawsuits). This is another reason for high health care costs, in that we have licensing requirements for most care and then turn around and allow colleges to set low limits for new medical students(which then drives up tuition prices) creating a shortage of available providers.
and the needle and the damage done
a little bit in hollwood ones OHHHHH ohhh the damage is now done.
YUP IMAX retards have now begun the boycott 3d movement to now go viral EVERYWHERE
and ill be losses form this act of threat are far more then any actual damages some open source 3d engine can do, whats next ITS LINUX’s FAULT
OH WAIT thats SCO’s area
correction
P.S. i wrote at 12 years of age a sentence parser for the vic 20 why cant spell checker do somehting similar so i make even fewer mistakes….
be = BET
Re: correction
You wrote a sentence parser in only 3583 bytes of RAM? Or did you have the 16K Expansion cartridge?
Re: Re: correction
It’s easy to fit a parser in RAM. It is the dictionary that kills you.
Re: Re: Re: correction
Sorry, I guess correct sentence structure/grammar/ENGLISH(!!!!!!) isn’t being taught in schools anymore, because I have no freaking clue what he said. Just to be clear, I don’t mean that I didn’t understand the terms, I mean that it looks as though he randomly grabbed words from somewhere and threw them together.
Re: correction
Since you can’t seem to parse your own sentences, or make any sort of sense at all, I’m going to have to call bullshit on this one.
Lawyers, shmawyers
I hope the SFLC gets involved with this, and smacks down IMAX about this. Now if I can just get my lawyer to pay his bill for fixing his network… 🙂
The default strategy of lawyers...
These days, it seems that the default strategy of too many lawyers is to make an endless series of empty threats in the hopes of scaring some poor victim into capitulating. Of course, when large companies do this, they can simply win by virtue of being able to throw more money than a small victim, denying the victim’s ability to defend himself. A small victim will have to destroy itself financially to fight back, and then may still not win because you can find a judge to make just about any ruling you could want if you shop around.
Dammit I like IMAX
I don’t want to boycott them, but if they behave like assholes, then I’d be required to do so, by my higher self.
Monster effect
Didn’t monster cable try this tactic like 8 billion times?
sentance parser
taoareyo
i used the tape recorder as a database and it would go forward and back looking for proper parts of sentances in a zork like game i created
the vic 20 despite is low mem of 3.5 K had oddles of ability to load stuff off the cassette recorder
and later yes when i got a 16 K ram expander i thought OMG how can i ever use this much memory
thats when i added some graphics to said games
basically it would search for patterns of the at first a basic sentence
walk over there
go to house
sooner later longer and more exhaustive sentences.
I’ll say also that you could use a serial cable later on and hook as many vics to each other and use the resources
amazing what ya learn on BBS boards with a .3Kbytes modem