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2009年09月17日

Text::Pipe trademark controversy

There has been a series of curious emails from a software developer in Australia who argues that one of my Perl module distributions on CPAN infringe on his trademark. He has a Windows product called "TextPipe Pro" and thinks that my Perl module called Text::Pipe dilutes his desired search results.

It all started in December 2008; I've lost his original mail — I don't keep every bit of rubbish some random people send me — but here is my reply from that time (I've deleted his last name and all email addresses and other contact details):

From: Marcel Grünauer
Sent: Tuesday, 16 December 2008 9:42 AM
To: Simon
Subject: Re: Text-Pipe
Importance: High

Hi Simon,

On Dec 15, 2008, at 10:49 PM, Simon wrote:

> I would greatly appreciate it if you could rename your Text-Pipe  
> package to avoid confusion and to prevent dilution of the keywords I  
> use to earn an income.

Sorry, I won't rename my Perl distributions. "Text-Pipe" and its  
related distributions are only found on CPAN and on github and are  
Perl-specific. There are also people who use this package and I don't  
want to inconvenience them by renaming my packages.

It would also be a major undertaking for me as I would have to think  
of a new name, replace the names, create a new repository and import  
the whole history from the old one (you can't rename a repository on  
github), re-uploading all the distributions (there are several related  
ones), notifying everyone and so on.

Also, neither the word "text" nor the word "pipe" express particularly  
novel concepts in software, nor does the combination of the two.  
Regarding keywords: googling for "textpipe", "text pipe" and "text- 
pipe" lists your software as the top hits, so I don't think you have  
to fear anything from my set of perl modules. Further, I could also  
object that your description "A Swiss Army knife for fixing text"  
dilutes keywords normally referring to Perl.

"Text::Pipe" is not a trademark, nor does it challenge yours.

[...]

Marcel Grünauer

After that, I didn't hear any more from him for nine months, so I forgot all about it. Until the 17th September 2009, when Simon saw fit to bring up the topic again:

From: Simon
Subject: RE: Text-Pipe
Date: September 17, 2009 5:29:03 AM GMT+02:00
To: Marcel Grünauer

Hi Marcel,

TextPipe forms my entire income, and supports my wife, our 4 kids, and my
house mortgage.

TextPipe is a registered trademark (in Australia), but yes, I'd probably
have to register it in every country on the planet.

I've been using that name to describe it for over 10 years.

I am simply asking if you could please change your Perl module name to
Text::Filter, Text::Adaptor or something else.

Please reconsider.

Regards,

Simon

I considered. However, a few hours later, he made the questionable move of contacting my bosses at work about this matter:

Subject: Infringment of trademark TextPipe by Marcel Grünauer
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:38:50 +1000
From: Simon
Organisation: DataMystic
To: Marcel's Boss

[...]

I see this growing into a commercial vs free, trademarked vs 'I can do
whatever I like and you can't stop me because I work for a University'
type-war.

I would like you to get Marcel to change the name of his package to
something that does not conflict.

Failing that, I'd like you to mediate, or appoint a mediator from your
department who has worked for a software company, to help resolve this
matter in the best interests of all.

[...]

Now he was beginning to piss me off. I explained to my boss that I developed this module in my spare time and that we don't even use it at work, and my boss is cool, so he wrote that back to the guy. I also replied to the guy:

Subject: Re: Text-Pipe
From: Marcel Grünauer
Date: September 17, 2009 2:40:46 PM GMT+02:00
To: Simon

Hi Simon,

[...]

Text-Pipe is a Perl module distribution which I have developed purely in my
private time and it has nothing to do with work; it's not even used in any code
at work. As such I see you writing to my boss(es) as highly inappropriate. It
is also a sure way to get me to not consider any changes.

My boss has spoken to the company's lawyers - basically you don't stand a legal
chance to force me to change it. The lawyers see my original arguments (not
novel concepts, more general terms etc.) as valid as well; they also explicitly
stated that trademark law is not applicable in this particular case. Besides I
don't want to set a precedent for this kind of behavior - there would be no end
to it.

I am pleased to hear that your software financially supports you, your wife,
four children and a mortgage. Therefore let me repeat my original offer (from
nine months ago): If you would like to contract me to make any changes you
like, I can send you my rate card.

Regards,

Marcel Grünauer

At the time of writing this blog entry, the Google link Simon wrote about in his email would show mostly his software; my module came in third position on both the first and second page of search results. Maybe he just has a SEO problem, who knows.

The reason I'm writing about this at length is that it raises a potential problem. There are CPAN mirrors in many countries and I guess it would be next to impossible to make sure that no module name resembles any trademarked name in every country. So I ask the perl community to discuss this aspect.

Then something else happened which shows why it is a bad idea to piss off geeks who run the infrastructure. I discussed the whole matter with the fine folks on the #london.pm IRC channel when, after it had been noted that text-pipe.com was still available, Ash Berlin registered the domain without further ado and made it to point to the CPAN distribution.

It is possible that because of this, the ratio of Google search results for TextPipe Pro and Text::Pipe is going to change. I wonder if Simon is familiar with the term Streisand effect.

Note that I have no intention of infringing on anyone's trademark and I have no desire to take away business from TextPipe Pro. Anyone who is looking for a Windows text manipulation application will, upon landing on the CPAN web pages, quickly realize that this isn't what they were looking for and look at other search results. That being said, I don't take kindly to threats — however politely they may be phrased — and pestering my boss about it is a certain way to not get on my good side.

I've also put a link to the TextPipe Pro product web site in the SEE ALSO section of all modules of Text-Pipe 0.09, so maybe that'll be ok.

Anyway, like I wrote, this is a potential concern for the Perl community, so a discussion about it is welcome.

Update: He sent me another mail asking me to remove the links to his site again because "this is going to make the current situation worse, not better". So I did and uploaded version 0.10

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posted at: 17:37 | path: /misc | permalink | 19 comments | 0 trackbacks

2009年09月14日

Easy metadata for CPAN modules

Earlier I wrote about how to enhance a CPAN distribution by including metadata about that distribution's place in its infrastructure — where to find its homepage, bug tracker and repository.

There are now Module::Install plugins on CPAN that make this task easier. Tatsuhiko Miyagawa wrote Module::Install::Repository and I wrote Module::Install::Homepage and Module::Install::Bugtracker. So now your Makefile.PL can simply include these lines:

auto_set_homepage;
auto_set_bugtracker;
auto_set_repository;

To set the repository link, your distribution's version control is examined. The distribution's homepage is set to its page on http://search.cpan.org, and the distribution's bugtracker is set to its RT queue on http://rt.cpan.org.

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posted at: 10:13 | path: /dev | permalink | 0 comments | 0 trackbacks