The latest trademark snafu on the Net involves an unlikely enforcer: Steve Jackson, a role-playing game publisher and designer who fought and won a case against the US Secret Service for raiding his office in 1990.
Last week, Jackson asked Netcom to pull down the Web page of a group using the name "Illuminati," the name of one of Jackson's first games and a name he trademarked for online games in 1984. The ersatz Illuminati group was a guild of players building a noncommercial site regarding the game Ultima Online, a dragon-and-swordfight game published by another company.
"The name Illuminati is the millennia-old myth of a secret society that controlled all political and economic factors in the world," said Ultima player Avatar5, the official guild master of the Illuminati. "As a guild we thought that name fits our purposes perfectly. We strive to increase the fun factor for members by providing them the opportunity to be part of something bigger than they are."
Jackson said the guild also copied the company's trademarked logo - the eye-in-the-pyramid symbol which designates a secret society - and is coincidentally found on the back of a dollar bill. After taking down their page, members of the guild accused Jackson of attacking them senselessly.
"Mr. Jackson has taken a non-threatening group of gamers that pose no competition for him (in fact many members including myself were once customers), and attacked it without valid cause," said the guild master. He said the Illuminati guild plans to continue to use the name in the future and believes it is within its legal rights. "We neither claim to be a game or deceive guild members out of Jackson's games."
Trademark law charges owners with protecting their copyrights or risk losing them. "When it comes to the duty of the trademark holder to protect them, the law does not distinguish between for-profit and other infringement, which is the only reason I take on these things," Jackson said. "It always creates bad feelings, especially among those who assume I must be persecuting them for fun."
Donn Harms, an attorney who has been taking on more online trademark cases, concurred: "If you don't take steps to enforce your trademark, they can accuse you of laches - which is an old legal term for sitting on your hands. That's tacit approval to let someone else use it."
"If they'd put a disclaimer up on the site, they might have gotten away with it," says Harms. But Jackson says a disclaimer wouldn't have done the trick. The Ultima and Steve Jackson Games role-playing communities are too close together, he points out. This is a particularly urgent time to protect "Illuminati" - Jackson's company is working to publish an online version of the game soon, and should make an announcement this week.
Meanwhile, Jackson has been fielding angry email and explaining his side. Asked whether he sees any common ground between this event and the Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games, he says, "It's a parallel in the opposite direction. They're both attacks on my life and my creations. One of them's a government attack. The other's an unthinking attack from a couple of angry kids."
