Many of you probably have read a few of my articles about news that sounds more made up than not. I always thought mathNEWS was only read by people who are wandering, or have wandered, in the alleys of MC. mathNEWS has received complaints and threats of lawsuits before, but rarely by a well-known group. The owner of a popular TV show (and a few museums) is threatening to sue mathNEWS because of my use of one of its trademarks (namely, the phrase "believe it or not", hereafter called BION).
The fact that BION is actually a trademark surprised everyone in mathNEWS. It is hard to fathom that such a simple AND often-used phrase can be trademarked. It is even more difficult to think how such a household name would go after a small-time publication.
If you read those BION articles, you would know that there is absolutely no logo associated to the series of articles. I am not sure where they found the logo I allegedly "borrowed" from them.
On a letter sent to mathNEWS, the aforementioned corporation wrote that my use of the phrase may lead to confusion with the group's web site. If you check the site of that particular group, you can see many punctuation marks spinning around; but if you look at my articles on the web, all you can see is a bunch of words along with many misused punctuation marks.
On the good side, this has raised mathNEWS's profile dramatically after 30 years of living in a broom closet. We can now say "we have made it big time."
Finally, a little shameless plug — check out my BION articles to see what the fuss is all about.
Jason "the Screaming Accused" Lau
Is this my 15 minutes of fame?
(Is "15 minutes of fame" a trademark?)