I won't claim to be any sort of expert on copyright law, but I don't think you automatically get a trademark on every word you invent in a book. Especially a scientific term. Otherwise, some scientist could sue every time someone said "black hole" or "weak gauge boson".
Not to mention that it isn't even spelled the same.
I guess the people at Yahoo are lucky that Gulliver's Travels is too old to still be copyrighted.
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Or "shart."
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Legally, Google isn't obliged to pay anything (though it's no secret where the name originated), but ethically, now that people have really noticed that there are big dollars to be gleaned, maybe it should be. Maybe.
On the other hand, Google has become a success thanks to its concept, not thanks to its name, and nobody pays royalties to the descendants of Newton for use of the word "newton" or to those of whoever invented the words "micro" or "kilo" or the letter "e" or whatever, so Kasner's relatives are just SOL IMNSVHO ROFLMFAO BLNT. I mean, had they approached Google three years ago, their case MIGHT have been stronger, but now? I think not.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
In any event, I doubt that any of the success of google is down to people thinking "Hmm, I wonder what search engine to use? I know! I'll use the one that sounds similar to the word for "big number"! That's bound to be the best one". So I don't see how they'd be able to claim that google made money off of them. If they'd called themself "The Official BBC/Microsoft/Catholic Church search engine", then that would be a different story.
Posted by Epoch (Member # 136) on :
Yet another example of people trying get somethign for nothing.