Month: January 2008

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Sensis lawyers bully small fry over Yellow Pages trademark

Section of screenshot of Yellow Pages website taken today

Sensis, the Telstra subsidiary that owns things like the Yellow Pages and Trading Post, has kicked off a legal attack on small websites for “trademark infringement”. Why? Because they haven’t got an ® after every mention of “Yellow Pages”.

Apart from the daftness of attacking little fish, which only makes your company look like a bully, you’ve got to wonder why they’re doing it.

  1. They’re re-branding as “Yellow” anyway. yellowpages.com.au identifies itself as “yellow.com.au”, and their new logo just says “Yellow”. Here’s a screenshot of their site as of a few minutes ago.
  2. There doesn’t seem to be any actual trademark infringement. At least not by my reading of some material I’ll mention shortly.

I found out about this yesterday when Professor Roger Clarke posted to the Link mailing list. I’ve become more and more astounded at the stupidity of it all as I’ve read people’s comments…

Continue reading “Sensis lawyers bully small fry over Yellow Pages trademark”

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Secret Men’s Business

Photograph of a cramped urinal in St Ives

This urinal in a suburban office at St Ives is completely different from the boldly-patterned tiles of the Lansdowne Hotel men’s toilet floor. Starkly simple, almost bleak.

And, I should add, slightly claustrophobic.

As I mentioned in the comments, I think I will turn this into an art project. A colleague now works for Flickr and upgraded me to a “pro” account — even though I’ve published only one single image so I could comment on ’Pong’s photos.

Continue reading “Secret Men’s Business”

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Quatrefoil is not quadrapop

Oh, I should mention that Quatrefoil and quadrapop, who comment here, are two completely different women. There has been confusion in certain quarters, however.

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Touched by the UIBN

On her personal blog, Quatrefoil tells us that “Touched” is…

… just the name someone thought to give to the style of incredibly ordinary bra I bought this evening. Honestly! I think it describes their state of mind. (Un)fortunately the other styles by the same manufacturer were not called ‘squeezed’, ‘groped’ or ‘felt up’. Who comes up with these names anyway?

To which I replied…

Bra names are set by the International Brassiere Nomenclature Union (UIBN) under the rules agreed upon by the UIBN Convention of 1885, which was held at the Palace of Versailles.

The UIBN Approvals Committee comprises representatives from the five founding nations (France, Britain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands), the Treaty nations of 1919 (in order, Austria, Monaco, Luxembourg, Russia, Hungary, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Germany and the US), plus two rotating “guest nations”, currently Libya and South Korea.

All names must adhere to all 15 “Règles de la Nomenclature”. In this case, the name “Touched” has been selected under Rule 3, which specifies that single-word names must have an inherent “Référence à la passion érotique” without being explicit. The other words you suggest would fail that test.

You do have the right of appeal, however, to the International Court of Appeals for Brassiere Names in Geneva, provided that your petition is supported by a member of parliament from one of the UIBN Treaty nations or (since 1975) a Member of the European Parliament.

Perhaps Wikipedia needs to be updated in the light of this new-found information.

Then again, it has been said that I have too much time on my hands.

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A Corey Delaney cartoon for your pleasure

Clip from The Plastic Age cartoon

Rhys McDonald, who comments here and lives in our village a long way from our village up the coast somewhere, is apparently too shy to pimp his rather amusing cartoon of this week’s poster boy for post-natal abortion. Enjoy.

Actually, it’ll be interesting to see what sort of satire is generated by this boy. Do tell me if you see anything.

[Update 21 January 2008: For some reason I thought Rhys was a local. I was wrong.]

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It’s an organic… what?

Photograph of sign advertising Organic Root Stimulator

Maybe it’s just because I’m an Australian of A Certain Age, but I find this sign in an African grocery shop on Enmore Road rather funny. The fact that it’s “organic” is even better.