The Deseret News reports: A jury has found that Salt Lake Comic Con founders Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg, along with their company, violated a trademark when they named their fan convention a “comic con.” However, the jury decided that the trademark was not willfully violated, and only awarded $20, 000 of the $12 million that San Diego Comic-Con had asked for in damages. The decision came at the end of an eight-day jury trial and three years of legal maneuvering… And with an estimated 140 other fan conventions across the country calling themselves comic cons, the impact of the decision could be felt nationwide… The Salt Lake group also has an ongoing action with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seeking to invalidate San Diego’s “comic-con” trademark… San Diego Comic-Con, which has been holding events since 1970, has a trademark on “comic-con” with a hyphen, but was unsuccessful in its 1995 bid to trademark “comic con, ” with a space. The unhyphenated name “Comic Con International, ” as well as the event’s iconic “eye logo, ” are also protected by trademark. The event maintains that its trademarks cover the term “comic con” in all its forms… San Diego Comic-Con wanted more than $12 million in damages from Salt Lake, including over $9 million for a three-month “corrective advertising campaign” to dispel confusion… In his closing arguments, Michael Katz, an attorney for Salt Lake Comic Con, questioned the amount San Diego was seeking, noting that San Diego authorities said during trial the organization generally spends between $20, 000 and $30, 000 for a month of advertising. Slashdot reader AlanBDee writes: When I attended the Salt Lake City Comic Con I did assume it was the same organization that put on San Diego Comic-Con… But now I have to wonder how that will affect other Comic Cons around the nation? What should these comic based fan conventions be called if not Comic Con? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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San Diego Comic-Con Wins Trademark Suit Against ‘Salt Lake Comic Con’
“A pair of security researchers recently uncovered a Nigerian scammer ring that they say operates a new kind of attack…after a few of its members accidentally infected themselves with their own malware, ” reports IEEE Spectrum. “Over the past several months, they’ve watched from a virtual front row seat as members used this technique to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from small and medium-sized businesses worldwide.” Wave723 writes: Nigerian scammers are becoming more sophisticated, moving on from former ‘spoofing’ attacks in which they impersonated a CEO’s email from an external account. Now, they’ve begun to infiltrate employee email accounts to monitor financial transactions and slip in their own routing and account info…The researchers estimate this particular ring of criminals earns about US $3 million from the scheme. After they infected their own system, the scammers’ malware uploaded screenshots and all of their keystrokes to an open web database, including their training sessions for future scammers and the re-routing of a $400, 000 payment. Yet the scammers actually “appear to be ‘family men’ in their late 20s to 40s who are well-respected, church-going figures in their communities, ” according to the article. SecureWorks malware researcher Joe Stewart says the scammers are “increasing the economic potential of the region they’re living in by doing this, and I think they feel somewhat of a duty to do this.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
HughPickens.com writes: Cybersquatting is registering, selling or using a domain name with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else’s trademark. It generally refers to the practice of buying up domain names that use the names of existing businesses with the intent to sell the names for a profit to those businesses. Now Andrew Allmann writes at Domain Name Wire that New York company Office Space Solutions, Inc. has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against Jason Kneen over the domain name WorkBetter.com that Kneen registered in 1999 although Office Space Solutions didn’t use the term “Work Better” in commerce until 2015. “Workbetter.com is virtually identical to, and/or confusingly similar to the WORK BETTER Service Mark, which was distinctive at the time that the Defendant renewed and/or updated the registration of workbetter.com, ” says the lawsuit. But according to an Office Space Solutions’ filing with the USPTO, it didn’t use the term “Work Better” in commerce until 2015. Office Space Solutions is making the argument that the domain name was renewed in bad faith. According to Kneen, Office Space previously tried to purchase the domain name from him and after it failed to acquire the domain name, is now trying to take it via a lawsuit. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
eldavojohn writes It’s 2015 and the EFF is still submitting requests to alter or exempt certain applications of the draconian DMCA. One such request concerns abandoned games that utilized or required online servers for matchmaking or play (PDF warning) and the attempts taken to archive those games. A given examples is Madden ’09, which had its servers shut down a mere one and a half years after release. Another is Gamespy and the EA & Nintendo titles that were not migrated to other servers. I’m sure everyone can come up with a once cherished game that required online play that is now abandoned and lost to the ages. While the EFF is asking for exemptions for museums and archivists, the ESA appears to take the stance that it’s hacking and all hacking is bad. In prior comments (PDF warning), the ESA has called reverse engineering a proprietary game protocol “a classic wolf in sheep’s clothing” as if allowing this evil hacking will loose Sodom & Gomorrah upon the industry. Fellow gamers, these years now that feel like the golden age of online gaming will be the dark ages of games as historians of the future try to recreate what online play was like now for many titles. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
szczys writes: Intel is upping their bid for a place at the efficient-yet-powerful device table. They’ve launched their Edison board, which features an x86 based SoC running at 100 MHz. The footprint measures 35.5mm x 25.0mm and offers a 70-pin connector to break out 40 pins for add-on hardware. Also at the Intel Developer Forum today, the company demonstrated a PC running on Skylake, a new CPU microarchitecture based on the 14nm process used for Broadwell. Intel is pushing to break into both wearable devices and household devices, as it sees both as huge opportunities for growth. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
You’ve probably never heard of Sverker Johansson, but you probably should have. He is, afterall, the most prolific WIkipedia author on the internet—having written 2.7 million articles for the online encyclopaedia. Read more… 
Zothecula (1870348) writes “The Retina displays featured on Apple’s iPhone 4 and 5 models pack a pixel density of 326 ppi, with individual pixels measuring 78 micrometers. That might seem plenty good enough given the average human eye is unable to differentiate between the individual pixels, but scientists in the UK have now developed technology that could lead to extremely high-resolution displays that put such pixel densities to shame.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The software giant’s cloud storage service infringes the trademark name of BSkyB, one of the largest broadcasters in Europe, the U.K.’s High Court in London rules. [Read more]