This Guy Trademarked the Symbol for Pi and Took Away Our Geeky T-Shirts

[Joe4evr]

Not really tech news, but nearly everyone here is a geek too, right?

 

This may be the biggest legal controversy to engulf the mathematical constant pi since that time in 1897 when the Indiana legislature tried to declare it equal to 3.2: A Brooklyn artist is claiming a broad trademark in T-shirts, jackets, caps, and other apparel featuring the Greek letter, resulting in the mass, temporary removal of thousands of products from the custom t-shirt printing site Zazzle.

 

At issue is U.S. trademark registration 4,473,631, issued to one Paul Ingrisano, aka “Pi Productions Corp” of New York. In January, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gave Ingrisano a trademark on the symbol π.—pi followed by a period—a design Ingrisano uses on T-shirts sold at some brick-and-mortar stores.

 

 

Pi is a popular symbol in mathematical puns, so the pi-pocalypse lit a firestorm in the print-on-demand T-shirt world. “This is asinine,” wrote Dave Lartigue, whose banned “Pi plus E” shirts asserted that pi summed with the mathematical constant e add up to a tasty dessert. “Zazzle gave me instructions on how to file a counter-notice, and I plan to. Not because I really care about the dumb design, but because this is ridiculous asshattery that shouldn’t be allowed to continue.”

Full article at Wired

 

Uhm... what? This is just insane. I guess on the plus side, the trademark in question is listed as "Published For Opposition" on the Justitia website, which I presume means that it can still be revoked without too much problem.

[Bluejay0]

NO ONE CAN TAKE OUR PIES!!!

 

wait... OH PI!!! whoops... I'M STILL MAD THOUGH!

[flibberdipper]

Yeah... Go away there buddy. We don't like you at all now.

[Derangel]

Wait wait wait. So let me get this straight. The US Trademark folks allowed someone to trademark a Greek symbol that has had significant mathematical meaning for AT LEAST 70 years longer than this country has existed? You know corruption in the copyright system I understand but how stupid are the people they hire to do this shit?

[Fetzie]

Wait wait wait. So let me get this straight. The US Trademark folks allowed someone to trademark a Greek symbol that has had significant mathematical meaning for AT LEAST 70 years longer than this country has existed? You know corruption in the copyright system I understand but how stupid are the people they hire to do this shit?

 

Make that mathematical significance about 2000 years longer than the USA has existed.

[Sidiox]

Make that mathematical significance about 2000 years longer than the USA has existed.

More importantly it is a letter, I could also try and trademark the letter A, then no website or company can use it. Just as stupid.

[Legion]

Well this is the second dumbest thing I've heard all day.

What a clown.

[JcGross]

Bullshit. Again, a great example of the USA's limitless stupidity. This is like trademarking any letter with a dot after it, like "J.", or "Ő.". Just gtfo please, it's not enought that you steal other cultures' intellectual property, you want to make money off of it.

[Beskamir]

More importantly it is a letter, I could also try and trademark the letter A, then no website or company can use it. Just as stupid.

Guess I better trademark "N" "S" and "A" so I can give the NSA trouble (Might do the same with the trademark and patent office too...)

[Shakaza]

But...I like my Pi shirts. I have one with the first couple thousand digits of Pi and one that has the unit circle in radians. D:

[Carpenoctem]

It's kind of sad that these people try to make money off everything they come across.

 

What is even more sad is that it looks like those patent guys do not have any sort of filter sometimes

[Marco Martinho]

Isnt this part of the "american dream" ? You can do anything. Go 'Murica

[Murdoch]

Wait wait wait. So let me get this straight. The US Trademark folks allowed someone to trademark a Greek symbol that has had significant mathematical meaning for AT LEAST 70 years longer than this country has existed? You know corruption in the copyright system I understand but how stupid are the people they hire to do this shit?

 

Just curious, where did you get '70 years' from?

[Nineshadow]

Wait...does that mean this guy also trademarked circles?Wow.

 

SOMEONE PATENT THE WORD "PATENT"!

[Nineshadow]

Wait guys,he didn't patent pi.

He patented pi followed by a period.

π.

[darkspeedy26]

Wait...does that mean this guy also trademarked circles?Wow.

-snip-

+

Wait guys,he didn't patent pi.

He patented pi followed by a period.

π.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooohhh i see the difference... .

well, then better dont make anything with a circle followed by a dot

[Mooshi]

I'm legitimately convinced the people working on the trademark committee are made up of the collective shit of the dumbest people on the planet and somehow gained sentience.

[bob345]

In that case, I'm going to patent patents. WHAT NOW!

[greenroost1445]

what'll happen to the calculators????

[vladnik]

Wow. Just wow. I thought the patent system couldn't get any worse. Guess I was wrong...

[Gullerback]

I'm gona go trademark 6.  Sports teams get ready for court!

[Kamil]

This really is absurd. If he trademarked an image which contained pi and a period, then I guess that wouldn't be too unreasonable and it would basically mean you just need to use a different font than he did (and if he's going to trademark it I would demand that he make the font himself anyway), but you can't trademark common words for a reason and that protection should extend to symbols of various sorts as well.

I'm also pissed that he trademarked pi with a period, but is going after people who used only pi.

[Derangel]

Just curious, where did you get '70 years' from?

 

Wikipedia. The first known use of the Greek symbol to represent the mathematical equation of pi was in 1706 by a mathematician. The US declared independence in 1776.

[Tech_Dreamer]

[Misanthrope]

Wait wait wait. So let me get this straight. The US Trademark folks allowed someone to trademark a Greek symbol that has had significant mathematical meaning for AT LEAST 70 years longer than this country has existed? You know corruption in the copyright system I understand but how stupid are the people they hire to do this shit?

 

Well that's evidence of a failing education system: public servants that apparently never had a single fucking math class and didn't think the symbol was important.