Cornell University Nastygram
I just received the following nastygram from one Mr. Thomas Bruce, alerted by VP Susan Murphy to the blog’s presence:
I am writing to request that you remove the name Cornell University from the name of your blog and website at cornell.elliottback.com. While we appreciate your hosting a forum in which Cornell news and events can be discussed, your use of the words Cornell University on the blog is confusing and can easily be misinterpreted to mean that the blog is maintained and/or sanctioned by the university. In fact, neither is the case.
Cornell University is a trademarked name and can only be used with the permission of the university. More specifically your use of the Cornell University name in this manner is unauthorized, misleading, and in violation of Section 397 of the General Business Law of the State of New York.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. I trust you will attend to this matter quickly.
Sincerely,
Thomas W. Bruce
Vice President for University Communications
Cornell University
308 Day Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
phone: 607-255-9929
fax: 607-255-4763
Since I’m too busy right now to get into a big fight about trademark confusion, I’ve changed the Blog title to “Cornell Blog: An unofficial blog about Cornell University”, which can’t possibly be confused as being related to Cornell University proper. Clearly, Mr. Bruce was too lazy to read the two obvious disclaimers that disavow any connection with the University. I wonder if he knows about the two livejournals bearing the University name:
I’m also changing the name because it appears New York State has a special sheltering provision (General Business Law Sct. 397) for non-profit institutions that allow them to enforce their trademarks more forcefully:
397. Unlawful use of name or other identification of certain non-profit organizations. 1. No person, firm, association or corporation shall use, for advertising purposes or for purposes of trade, the name, symbol, device or other identification of any non-profit corporation, … without having first obtained the written consent of such non-profit corporation, association, society or organization. Any violation of this section shall be a misdemeanor.
I’d like to point out that the url alone–cornell . elliottback . com–is enough to prevent trademark confusion. The EFF seems to agree with me:
Can I use a trademark in my blog’s name or in the title of a blog post?
Yes, if it is relevant to the subject of your discussion and does not confuse people into thinking the trademark holder endorses your content. Courts have found that non-misleading use of trademarks in URLs and domain names of critical websites is fair. (Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp. v. Faber, URL www.compupix.com/ballysucks; Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer, domain name www.bosleymedical.com).
I will email back Mr. Bruce and forward him some of these thoughts. I don’t think Cornell University can truly be called an institution of higher learning when it’s bent on shutting down an intellectual discussion-community using its name.
Update:
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing writes, “Elliott’s site won’t confuse anyone. It is, instead, a fan site about Cornell University, spreading goodwill about the institution. Priceless, genuine goodwill. They’ve squandered this goodwill.” I definitely appreciate the support!
| This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 9:17 pm and is tagged with cornell news, cornell university, ithaca ny, profit institutions, thomas bruce, susan murphy, blog title, trademarked name, livejournals, mr thomas, university communications, general business, livejournal, state of new york, business law, person firm, profit organizations, new york state, vp, confusion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
Hi Elliott, good luck with this! Now that you’ve got some pertinent publicity you should gain useful information for your cause.
Watch out, Cornell College is next.
Is Cornell Communications (http://www.cornell.com/) part of the shool as well… oopps, better get them too.
Now I know which university NOT to send my kid to. I refuse to have my tuition money spent on frivolous legal nonsense.
im a cornellian and I didnt know this existed till now. protect your rights! stupid cornell….
Pointer to:
bestbuysux.org
note all its legalese on the home-page…
lots of discussion from employees and customers
Good luck fighting city hall. Is Korn-Ell a state school? If so, perhaps, there is a First Ammendment issue here. Perhaps, you can go to a sound alike name a la KORNell? Best wishes. BTW I write an unofficial ezine about a college. So, I guess I could be next. Fight harder! So I don’t have to. Comrade in arms behind the lines in hte people’s republik of new jerzeee.
Tommy Bruce is a liar, a bully, and a thug — and a sweet talker, too. Please don’t give him the pleasure of bowing to his ridiculous demands. Remember, “The Cornell Daily Sun” is itself a registered trademark, which is one legal way around Section 397.
This reminds me of VP Robert Harris’s suggestion that if The Cornell American removed the word “Cornell” from its name, he wouldn’t have a problem with it. Bullshit! That wasn’t the issue then, and trademark law isn’t what’s spinning Mr. Bruce’s toupee now.
It’s the fact that this blog has been following the stabbing story with rigor, logic, and insight — the kind that openly questions University rhetoric and calls out their contradictions and hypocrisies. Worse (for the Cornell Press Office), readers are allowed to respond with their own opinions! The Big Red Arch mentality of celebrating differences while quashing dissent is undermining this institution’s supposed dedication to the quest for truth.
You would think that the type of kids Cornell wants to attract would be smart enough to not confuse this blog and the official Cornell University website.
Speaking as a current Cornell student: Stand fast!!
(Oh, and this is at least getting your blog publicity… I hadn’t heard about it before.)
Dude, don’t change a damn thing. The same thing happened to us over a username on our forums (and ended up on the front page of digg no less) and I never even bothered to email the guy back. What about these other violators:
http://cornell.blogspot.com/
http://cornell.wordpress.com/
I’m looking for Korn’s latest concert dates and couldn’t find that information here. Is this the wrong site? I’m so confused and stupid, I hope some lawyers will spend huge sums of money looking out for my well-being.
Judging from my three years working here at Cornell, I suspect that the extremely dumb decision to harass you was made by a single person within one of the many fiefdoms of this weirdly disconnected university.
I suspect there is, at this moment, someone in a different department ordering a plaque that they plan to present to you in an official Cornell “thanks-for-blogging” ceremony in Appel Commons.
I’m sure that the person who sent the Cease-and-desist letter and the person engraving the plaque have never met, and have no awareness that the other exists.
They are probably both funded by the NEH, and will someday engage in an idle “oh, you work at Cornell too?” chat during a conference somewhere.
Keep the faith. Keep on blogging, and don’t let some silly lawyer on a fishing expedition make you think you aren’t a valuable part of the Cornell community.
Fellow Cornellian here. You should tell the Sun–it’d give the columnists something to be idignant about.
Seriously, this is bullshit. At least you got plugged on boingboing out of the deal.
saw this on boingboing. I could go into all sorts of legalise to baffle and bullshit but that would bring me down to Mr. Bruce’s level. Obviously this is, shall I say, stupid. Please don’t change a thing – unless its schools
That’s funny, I didn’t see anything in the letter about “shutting down” your blog. They just wanted you to make it clear you’re not affiliated with the university, which you’ve now done in even more significant ways than you had before. I applaud you taking those steps instead of “fighting” some illusory “good fight.”
And for all those people who think Cornell is being thuggish or frivolous, there is one hard and fast truism to trademark law: If you don’t actively and vigorously protect your trademark every time it appears someone might be infringing upon it, your rights in the mark *automatically* decline. Nobody showed up on Elliott’s doorstep with a subpoena; nobody threatened him with legal action if he didn’t shut the blog down. They asked him to make it clear that he doesn’t represent Cornell. He’s now done that – so if Cornell was thuggish, is Elliott a coward?
I don’t think so. I think everyone here has been reasonable. There are plenty of things going on to get genuinely bent about. This isn’t one of them.
Cornell is famous for it’s flagrant abuse of intellectual property. The Lab of Ornithology has the largest collection of bird songs in the world, recorded by volunteers using equipment donated to the university, and yet this library remains under copyright so no one else is allowed to use it without paying a huge fee. Out of 25 terrabytes of data, only two short clips are in public domain. Frankly it’s an embarrassment to the university and our education system as a whole.
Don’t even get me started on how some classes at Cornell require students to buy textbooks with ADVERTISING in them. Truly an embarrassment to higher education.
Hi Alex, I’m Mary Guthrie. I manage requests for materials from the Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library, the organization you just accused of “flagrant abuse of intellectual property”. I would like to address several misrepresentations in your comment.
No, our entire collection is not available in the public domain. Libraries do not have the power to remove copyright protection from works that appear in their collections. Many contributors to the Library’s collection retain copyright to their material. These recordists volunteer to give us a sublicense that allows us to use their recordings to make money for conservation.
Our contractual obligations, our business model, and the costs of bandwidth don’t allow us to give away full-resolution versions of our audio and video files. Our patrons are charged on a sliding scale, with researchers and educators paying the least (often nothing at all), and commercial users paying the most.
Last year, we successfully used this model so that 11% of our time spent on commercial jobs made more than 90% of our income. The money we earned went back to support conservation projects, from biological inventory work, to documenting declining species. The rest of our time was spent archiving and cataloging these important recordings so they will be available to researchers in the future.
We have a “free sounds” page here with more than 30 downloadable recordings of bird song. In addition, we are in the process of making streaming versions of all of our sounds and videos available for free online. Right now you can listen to the entire marine collection on our beta site (I recommend the killer whales).
Mary:
I appreciate your response. Perhaps my original comment of flagrant abuse was an exaggeration. However, I’d like to point out a couple of things as well:
Libraries do not have the power to remove copyright protection from r in their collections.
The library isn’t, but the copyright holder is, which as I understand it is the university in many cases. Even if the copyright is not removed the copyright holder has the ability to license their works under creative commons or any otworks that appeaher copyleft license.
Our contractual obligations, our business model, and the costs of bandwidth don’t allow us to give away full-resolution versions of our audio and video files.
I’m was not aware of the contractual obligations. However, bandwidth fees can still be reduced drastically through peer to peer file transfer methods such as bittorrent, or reduced to almost zero through other peer to peer services like kazaa.
Alex
Mr.Back, it’s good of you not to back down. I don’t find the university’s action to be disgusting. It simply is stupid, and I believe it is based on a knee-jerk reaction from people who spent too little time looking around this blog and have too much power and desire to protect themselves. Quite natural of giant organizations really. The reaction from most people are also natural to the internet populace: condemn the group with most power and support the little guy; also, internet freedom is a touchy subject. Anyway, things like this happen all the time eventhough it shouldn’t. I doubt any major universities does not engage in frivolous litigation. Mr.Back handled it well, and the university, barring it launching a full attack, has gone through the usual routine and did what’s “required” of it.
Regards,
Canuck
Before we start dreaming up conspiracy theories about Tommy Bruce and the rest of Cornell’s alleged Big Red Tape, I think it might be easier to take a deep breath and reconsider the situation.
Prior to the cease and desist request, Elliott’s website was flatly called “Cornell University Blog” – a name which directly reflects the University. Fair and simply, the University via Tommy Bruce is in its right to ask Elliott this request. The simple fact is that the prior name of this website was ambigious enough to suggest that it was an official blog of Cornell University.
Now did Tommy Bruce find out about Elliott’s website due to the posting in regards to the stabbing? Most likely, yes, but other website have been posting “insightful and logical” comments on the incident as well, which I am certain that Mr. Bruce also reads. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, none of them have been served with such letters by Cornell. Why? Because their names do not suggest an explicit association with Cornell University.
I am sure that Cornell engages in this type of practice all of the time, or else you would see all sorts of official sounding Cornell organizations popping up. Ever notice how there is no “Cornell Book Store” or “Cornell University T-Shirt Store” around Ithaca…? Cornell has presumably squashed that type of use of its name. For good reason as well: the University has a vested interest in protecting the integrity of its name. Like it or not, this is one way the reputation of its academics, faculty, staff, students, and alumni can be maintained. And as an alum, I am glad that the University is looking out for its reputation…
There is actually a prior precedent in regards to this issue. For the entering freshmen class of 2001, a couple of enterprising students went about building an unofficial class website, dubbed http://www.cornell2005.com. The administration obviously didn’t like such an enterprise, as the website was ambigious as to whether or not it was an official university website. (And interestingly enough, when I first found out about the website, I assumed that it was officially related to Cornell.) The founders of the website tried to fight the administration at first, but it was a waste of time — the University was obviously in its right.
So yes, believe it or not, Cornell has good reason to be concerned about the use of its name, just as the Lab of Ornithology has good reason to charge movie studios that use its resources. Now go find yourself something more worthwhile to get yourself into a huff over, like the cost of tuition or something.
Matthew and others,
So yes, believe it or not, Cornell has good reason to be concerned about the use of its name, just as the Lab of Ornithology has good reason to charge movie studios that use its resources.
I don’t take issue with charging for commercial use, but rather with charging for non-commercial use. I don’t begrudge the lab of O the right to make money to support its employees and its research. However, being that they have special priveleges under the law, for example they are tax exempt, they also should have a special obligation to society that goes above and beyond what would be expected of a normal corporation.
Same thing goes for the government and for churches. Remember the recent uproar when Santorum wanted to make taxpayers pay for weather data that was collected with their own money? Or when the new pope decided to copyright his teachings and only make them available to those who pay money? How is the situation with academia any different when it is funded directly through contributions and grants from the state and federal government, and indirectly through the special privelege of having to pay taxes on neither income or land?
To quote directly from the university mission statement, “As the land-grant university for the state of New York, we apply the results of our endeavors in service to our alumni, the community, the state, the nation, and the world.” Is putting a walled garden around content and charging people for non commercial use really aligned with the mission of the university?
I can go into a public library and read a book for free. The library is paid for with my tax money, so it is reasonable that I can read it for free. If I want to use a photocopier at the library to copy some pages, I pay.
This is not a wall. This is reasonable.
Elizabeth,
When you pay to copy pages out of a book (assuming it is public domain) you are paying for use of the photocopying machines. This is roughly analagous to paying for bandwidth in the online world. The issue here is that even if you are willing to throw in a reasonable amount for bandwidth you still don’t have access to the material.
Now as Mary said, some of the material is copyrighted by the those who originally made the recordings. This material is subject to whatever restrictions the copyright holders place on it.
However, as I understand it the copyright on other material in the collection is held directly by the university or the lab of ornithology. This material is behind a walled garden so that it can only be used by those the university chooses, and only on the terms and conditions set by the university.
Now if people want to use the recordings made by the university to make a profit then I am all for charging a licensing fee. This would cover movies, talking plush toys, ringtones, etc. Mary said this amounts to roughly 90% of income, which itself is only a fraction of the ornithology budget since much of it comes from grants, donations, and endowments.
The question is, if the money generated from non commercial use represents only a fraction of a fraction of the lab of ornithology’s budget, why charge for it? Why not have it all available over the Internet to any who wants to use it for research, pleasure, or otherwise?
As it currently stands, the public is paying twice for this material. First they are paying through the form of government grants and tax exemptions granted to further the educational mission of the lab of O and the university at large. But then they are asked to pay again for the data, above and beyond the costs for bandwidth (photocopying in your analogy).
This is wrong. It’s like the government charging for weather data that was collected using taxpayer funds in the first place. It’s like Scientology charging for its teaching even though it is a 501(c)(3).
The reason why I say it’s an embarrassment to the university is because it puts Cornell at the same level as Rick Santorum and the Scientologists. This is especially painful in an era where MIT puts all of its course material available online for free. There are entire schools in India that teach based on this MIT course material because they can’t afford to develop their own. So while kids in India may be able to get a computer science education they could never afford otherwise, they are **** out of luck if their passion is ornithology.
Releasing this material to the public for non commercial use would be an invaluable service to humanity. I would be against it if A) the lost revenue would bankrupt the program or B) there were no ways around the bandwidth issue; as far as I can see neither of these are the case.
I don’t know the first thing about trademark law. Or I didn’t until I wrote to a person familiar with the area, asking her what she thought about this discussion. Here’s how she replied:
“…the law essentially is applied as saying that if you don’t consistently try to stop people from misusing the name, you can’t suddenly try when it is a misuse that really bothers you. It’s all or nothing. …
Cornell has no choice, but to try to stop this type of thing – otherwise, [Cornell] couldn’t try to shut down Cornell Business School, which did actually open about five years ago on Cornell Street in some city in California. That could have been very confusing on resumes…
The press office letter might have indicated that they are legally required to try to shut down everyone. The correct answer, of course, was to call the blog owner and explain the problem; perhaps they could have offered some alternatives that would satisfy everyone. Unfortunately, they do need the paper trail for legal reasons, in case they sue someone for real …”
So, I think Elliot handled this well by changing the blog’s name. I hope that satisfies Cornell, but if there is still some issue, I understand why Cornell would need to protect its trademark.
Following the mention by burton:
Burton said: on March 3rd, 2006 at 10:19 am
What about these other violators:
cornell.wordpress.com
I’ve sat and twiddled my thumb for 10 days. Still nothing. I’m all disappointed over here
Perhaps it’s because neither of my blogs have anything to do with the University.
I sit hoping that someone from the “institute of higher learning”, and in the meantime Elliot, good luck with your “fight”.
Cornell Finch.
[...] Elliot Back has been causing some controversy recently by publicizing information about Matt Pearlstone, a Cornellian who recently died of alcohol poisoning while spending time at UVA over Spring Break. Pearlstone’s Facebook profile — recently taken down by Pearlstone’s family members — was screen-captured and displayed in recent posts on Back’s “unofficial blog about Cornell University,” so aptly named per the request of University Communications Vice President, Thomas Bruce. Other information on Pearlstone, including posts he submitted to College Confidential detailing his stance on alcohol and his insistency on the well-mannered approach to which he takes drinking, is also detailed on Back’s unofficial Cornell blog. Pearlstone’s family members, however, have recently discovered the site and are now up-in-arms about the information being revealed. Friends and family of Matt Pearlstone claim that Back’s entries are done in “extremely poor taste” and insist that the information released is not indicative to the type of person Matt is. Back continues to defend his position and the ongoing uncovering of information on Pearlstone and his death as an exercise of intellectual freedom. [...]
[...] The university got on my case because this blog used the term “Cornell University” in its title. Check out the following search results from Google Blogsearch–spammers. Why don’t they go after these guys? [...]
Sounds like susan murphy and tommy bruce have their heads up their asses AGAIN. Don’t they have anything better to do?
[...] Don’t think that Cornell won’t ask them to change their name–after all, this blog received a cease and desist for including Cornell in its name after publishing unpopular, but well-reasoned (I’d like to think) articles. Unfortunately, whether you agree with it or not, the article in the Cornell Review is protected free speech. And, its use of the Cornell name is clearly within fair-use. [...]
This sucks, i wouldn't think that schools would enforce that heavily. For example if i start a fan site for their sports teams, are they going to come after me the same?