It's a lawsuit as imagined by the Marx Brothers. But what would you expect from a dispute between the publishers of the Journal of Irreproducible Results and the Annals of Improbable Research, the scientific community's two chroniclers of absurdity, sloppy research, and general laboratory lunacy?
The Journal is the older of the two, tracing its roots back to 1955. The Annals was started in 1994 by former Journal editor Marc Abrahams, who left after a long period of financial instability at the Journal, taking most of the editorial board with him to his new publication. Since then, the Annals has amassed a print circulation of 2,000, started a monthly email newsletter that reaches 20,000, and cultivated a much higher profile than the Journal. Abrahams published a collection of The Best of the Annals of Improbable Research with W.H. Freeman and Company this year, and has for seven years hosted a much-publicized off-the-wall awards ceremony, the Ig Nobel Prizes, which gets airplay each year on National Public Radio's "Science Friday" program.
Until this August, Abrahams was busily publishing the Annals from his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, distributing such scientific gems to his readers as "The Ability of Woodchucks to Chuck Cellulose Fibers," "The Aerodynamics of Potato Chips," "The Medical Effect of Kissing Boo-Boos," and, of course, the annual swimsuit issue. One day, however, a sheriff showed up at Abrahams' door with a lawsuit filed in an Illinois federal court by George Scherr, publisher of the Journal.
Scherr's suit accuses Abrahams of unfair business practices, racketeering, and trademark infringement, and seeks US$4.2 million in damages. Scherr claims that the name Annals of Improbable Research is confusingly similar to his publication, and also alleges a "conspiracy to defraud" him, although the complaint doesn't actually name anyone other than Abrahams, implying that perhaps Abrahams has conspired with himself.
Scherr is also seeking to win control of the term "Ig Nobel Prize." In August, the US Patent and Trademark Office rejected his ownership claim, but Scherr has six months to appeal.
In response to the suit, Abrahams created the Strategic AIR Defense Fund, enlisting three real Nobel laureates as honorary co-chairs and a Boston law firm to represent him in court. Donations have been trickling into the fund since this year's Ig Nobel Prizes in October.
Later in the fall, the depositions began, with Scherr serving as his own attorney. They rival Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" in their tautology:__GEORGE: I want the address of the post office box.
MARC: It's in there, Cambridge.
GEORGE: I see a number, but I want -
MARC: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02238.
GEORGE: Mr. - Mr. Abrahams. I want the address of that post office box.
MARC: You want the street address -
GEORGE: Yes, sir.
MARC: - of a post office box?
GEORGE: You bet.
MARC: I don't know the street address of the post office.
GEORGE: You picked up the mail there almost on a daily basis, did you not?
MARC: Yeah.
GEORGE: And you don't know where that - where that post office is?
MARC: I know where it is. I don't know their specific address. I can call.
GEORGE: Tell me where it is exactly so I can find it.
MARC: It's in Harvard Square. 02238 is the zip code for the Harvard Square post office.
GEORGE: Mr. Abrahams, do you still go to that post office to pick up mail?
MARC: Yes. I still go to that post office to pick up mail.
GEORGE: Then it would be a simple matter for you to get the exact address of that post office, wouldn't it?
MARC: It would be a simple matter for me to get that address.
GEORGE: I'm going to ask you to do that.__
Scherr, says Abrahams, never actually did require him to provide the street address of the Harvard Square post office, though Scherr did apparently find the exact location. He served the post office with a subpoena, apparently finding it implicated somehow in the suit, based on the fact that the post office serves as the Annals' mailing address.
"This lawsuit is as close as I'll ever come to being Alice in Wonderland," says Abrahams. "But it's also a gigantic waste of a lot of people's time and money. We're a very tiny, young magazine and the last thing we need at this point is someone chewing up our time and money."
Abrahams has been using his monthly email newsletter, the mini-AIR, to rally support for his cause - a public relations effort that irks Scherr, who also speaks disdainfully of Abraham's decision to post the entire lawsuit on the Annals Web site.
But Scherr is reluctant to comment on the lawsuit at length. "I don't talk about legal actions that are on-going," he said. "I talk to a judge. It's not good practice to litigate a case in the public domain."
When pressed, though, Scherr says that "it's no secret that our trademark is being infringed - AIR is directly taken from JIR. We have no interest in getting them to stop publishing. We just don't want them to infringe on our trademark."
For his part, Abrahams counters, "There are publications called Science and The Sciences, and The Scientist. People in this community seem to have no trouble distinguishing them."
But Scherr says that AIR, in both its name and editorial focus, has "contributed to reducing JIR's circulation," which he claims has dropped from a high of 40,000 to 10,000. Neither periodical's circulation is audited by an independent third party.
In January, an Illinois judge will decide where the case should be tried - Illinois, where the Journal is based, or Massachusetts, home to the Annals - or if it should be tried at all. "I'd like to get it dismissed as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible," says Robert Dushman, the attorney representing Abrahams on a pro bono basis. (Expenses are being covered by the Strategic AIR Defense Fund.)
While Abrahams sees little humor in the case - except for taking occasional digs at Scherr, like "We believe the old saying that anyone who [acts as his own lawyer] has a fool for his client" - Scherr may be having a bit of fun. A sample issue of the Journal posted on his Web site features a collection of law-related articles, including "Relativity and Related Effects in Attorney Billing Practices" and "The Frivolous Medical Malpractice Case: A New Definition."
Is there any upside at all for Abrahams in this surreal suit? "Well, we are a science journal that observes curious phenomena," he says. "The plus side is that we have a new, very curious phenomenon to observe here."
