Dear Royal Institution: Here's a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Please use it!

UPDATE 22 May 2013: A significant change in the Ri position is very welcome but far from perfect.  See bit.ly/18QpKDp. Some more detailed thoughts about it in my latest blog post.

Original post follows: 

Dear Royal Institution

Let me first refer you to my earlier open letter, about your trademark on the name "Christmas Lectures."

Having had a bit more time to think, here's what I hope is a helpful suggestion.  On twitter I described this idea as a "Get Out of Jail Free Card".  

It's literally free to surrender either part or all of a trademark.  (The relevant forms are TM22 or TM23 on the UK IPO website).  There is a 3 month waiting period but you could of course announce straight away what you are doing.  

I can understand the Ri would be worried about surrendering the whole trademark, but if you quickly announce that you are voluntarily surrendering the parts of the trademark that you believe prevent Christmas Lectures being given around the country, we can all get on with our lives.  Most importantly science communicators can get on with planning great Christmas Lectures for 2013.

I don't have a precise list in mind of which parts should be surrendered but I'm sure you could quickly draw one up.  Presumably when you started insisting that my friends and other science communicators not give public Christmas Lectures without your permission, you had parts of the trademark claim in mind: those are the parts that I suggest you surrender.

Surrendering those parts would achieve a lot. 

• You'd be withdrawing any threat to people like my friends and many many others, that the hard work they have put into Christmas lectures over years was now wasted.
• You'd be openly admitting at least a partial mistake, which would make many people think better of you. Certainly including me.  I'd be very happy to praise you very highly for quickly fixing this problem.
• You'd have a great platform to start moving towards the kind of Christmas Lectures community I mentioned in my blog post.  
• You'd in no way inhibit any plans you might have to commercialise Ri's Christmas Lectures because of course nobody could use the name Ri Christmas Lectures or Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for any kind of event without agreement with you. 
• You'd be preventing yourself being in the position of needing to threaten Universities and other science communicators with lawsuits (which is the only logical endpoint if a scientist chose to ignore your demands, for example if they believed that your trademark was invalid.) 
• You'd only be surrendering parts of the trademark that are literally worthless, in the sense that clearly nobody giving a standard Christmas Lecture is going to pay money to the Ri to licence the name, when they derive no income from the lectures themselves (or at most a low ticket price to cover expenses.)   
• You'd only be surrendering parts of the trademark that are (again literally) indefensible.  At least in my opinion from the small investigations I have done (and clearly I am not a lawyer) I cannot see how these parts of the trademark could stand if challenged.  In comments to my blog post I have given several reasons for this view as well as the blindingly obvious fact that "Christmas Lectures" is a generic phrase for a lecture at Christmas.
• As I mentioned, it's free.  While I assume you spent money to get these parts of the trademark, I'm sure that a scientific body like the Ri would not fall for the sunk cost fallacy.   
• Finally, you'd be abandoning the parts of the trademark that are (yet again literally) ridiculous in the sense that it has opened the Ri to ridicule.   Apart perhaps from some early exasperated tweets, I have strenuously tried to avoid ridiculing the Ri for this move: but others have not been so restrained.

Again as I've mentioned as a comment before, parts of the trademark relating to tv programmes are at least not ridiculous and make some sense. I might or might not disagree with them but would certainly not challenge them. 

This was meant to be a quick and short letter, but enumerating the advantages of the suggestion took so long because there are so many and no disadvantages at all.   

Please do play this Get Out Of Jail Free card!

very best wishes

Ian Gent

An Open Letter To The Royal Institution

UPDATE 4 June 2013: An important blog comment on the legal position has been published, by the lawyer Simon Bradshaw.  This is certainly not legal advice but is important reading for anyone interested in this issue. I will not attempt to summarise it here.

UPDATE 22 May 2013: A significant change in the Ri position is very welcome but far from perfect.  See bit.ly/18QpKDp. Some more detailed thoughts about it in my latest blog post.

Original post follows: 

Dear Royal Institution

When I thought about Christmas Lectures until yesterday, I thought of happy memories of watching the likes of Eric Laithwaite and Carl Sagan and Chris Zeeman, and of watching Marcus Du Sautoy and Chris Bishop with my children.  I also thought of my friends in Universities reaching out to school children talking about Raspberry Pis.

Today I think about protecting brand value and licensing arrangements and trademark infringement.  Why?  Well, you know, but any other readers might wonder.  So read on.

You recently mailed a friend of mine, who has been running a successful series of Christmas Lectures since 2008.

Others of my friends run Christmas Lectures. Here's Duncan Smeed's lovely lecture from last year on youtube.  The Strathclyde Christmas Lecture series has been running from 1994.

You have indeed been running a successful series of Christmas Lectures from 1825. That is longer. Your Christmas Lectures are more famous. They are on television.  They are wonderful. I saw many as a child and my children now love them - we've bought some on DVD and recorded others.

What was your email to my friend about?  Congratulations on joining the club of people dedicating time and University resources for nothing, to the benefit of local people and especially schoolchildren?

No.

It said "we now own the term CHRISTMAS LECTURES® as a registered trademark." And then "the name CHRISTMAS LECTURES or CHRISTMAS LECTURE should not be used for any event without our consent to avoid this confusion. This applies to the description of the event as well as the title. It also applies to the organisation of one lecture or multiple lectures."

Oh wait. You knew that. Because you went to the trouble of trademarking "Christmas Lectures".  And mailing people who were giving Christmas Lectures.

And what you were telling people was: you are not allowed to give a lecture under the name "Christmas Lecture" - or even (I can't believe I'm writing this) in the description - without your permission.

I'd be with you 100% if people were using the name "RI Christmas Lecture" or even perhaps "Faraday Christmas Lecture".  But here's the thing. A Christmas Lecture is a lecture given at Christmas.  A vacuum cleaner is a cleaner which uses a vacuum. The word Hoover is a trademark but the phrase vacuum cleaner is not.  Maybe - and I am not a lawyer so what do I know? - your trademark is valid and will hold up if anyone stumps up the £200 to attempt to invalidate it.

But for the moment let's assume your registered trademark would hold up if challenged.  Here's my point.

It was wrong to trademark the two word phrase "Christmas Lectures" and it's wrong to attack those using the name Christmas Lectures.  

Wrong because Christmas Lectures are something many many people around the country have been doing. And have been doing for years.  I googled and found at random a 1977 New Scientist page listing five other Christmas Lectures around the country, not including your own.

Wrong because many scientists have given their time to encourage the public without thought of being challenged for doing so by the Royal Institution.

Wrong because those same lectures, from 1977, from 1994 on, from 2008 on, have added to the value of the name "Christmas Lectures."

According to your statements online, you say that you have owned the unregistered trademark and have only now registered it.  So according to this view, all my friends and their predecessors in 1977, were quite wrong to give Christmas Lectures.  They were guilty of passing off your property as their own.   You say now that "Ri has built up a tremendous brand over the years but now needs to be a bit more professional in protecting it and nurturing it for the greater good of science."   This means apparently  "We are in the process of drawing up a licensing arrangement for organisations that would like to maintain a strong association with the original CHRISTMAS LECTURES®."   Which is what you told my friend: hardly professional because you are saying my friend cannot give a lecture under the name Christmas Lecture but that at some indefinite date in the future some licensing deal might be struck.

Well, if you need to be professional about it now, then here's the last way you were wrong.

You're wrong because it's NOT just the Ri who has built up this brand.  It's my friends and many many others over the decades.  Now all that value that has been added to your brand is being taken over whole by you without reward.   With the false sense of security that these people assumed that you and they were in this together, building up the great affection so many of us have for the name "Christmas Lectures."  But apparently not.  Apparently they were (I'm not sure which) passing off your own property as their own, or giving you a free gift of additional brand value even though they didn't know it.  And there they were innocently thinking that they were giving Christmas Lectures to encourage children and adults to learn about science.

Here's what you should do.  Withdraw the trademark on the name "Christmas Lectures", and if you wish put a trademark on names which you clearly and rightly do own and, such as "Royal Institution Christmas Lectures" or "Ri Christmas Lectures".  If anyone wants to give a "Royal Institution Christmas Lecture", of course they must talk to you and licence the name to your satisfaction.

Here's what you must do for the good of science communication in this country. Publicly state that any and all Christmas Lectures are welcome this year and every year, under that name, without further permission or licensing from you, if the goal is communication to the public. That you would only ever object if there was some unfair attempt to imply connection with the Ri, or perhaps to profit from the event. I'm not aware of any Christmas Lectures run for profit, so it's inconceivable this could hurt any of my friends.  If you like, insist that a Christmas Lecture not sanctioned by you must state that it has no formal connection and is not approved by the Royal Institution.

Here's the sad thing.  You had the chance to reach out to my friends and many others around the country who love all Christmas Lectures, and form a community of people who would have loved to work with you to make Christmas Lectures a countrywide celebration.

But you trademarked "Christmas Lectures" and are telling people not to use those words to describe their events.

Your long time Christmas Lectures fan

Ian Gent

p.s. the comments section of this post is open for any reply from the Royal Institution.  If it's easier for you to do so please feel free to mail me and I will be happy to post your replies in the comments section for you.

10 Types of People

Abstruse Goose is great!

Ok I think the "10 types of people" joke needs to become a latter day lightbulb festival of alternative jokes. Here are a few.

The first couple I did come up with but sadly also found variants of them online (see lists below).

There are 11 types of people in the world. Those who understand unary, and those who don't.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who think this joke is about ternary.

Here is one from Chris Jefferson:

There are 10 types of people in the world, and each of them knows there are counting in base 10.

And if these are not geeky enough for you ...

Gurer ner 10 glcrf bs crbcyr va gur jbeyq. Gubfr jub haqrefgnaq rot13, naq gubfr jub qba'g.

There is 10 type of person in the world. Those who write numbers big endian.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who like garden path sentences. 

There are IO types of people in the world. Those who like typing the moons of Jupiter in capitals, and those who don't.

There are 10 type's of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who dont care about it's base but are dialling the apostrophe police right now.

There are 10 typos of people in the world: those who understand binary and peploe.

And surely it's time for a mashup?

How many people does it take to change a lightbulb? 

10. One to change the lightbulb and one to make a joke about binary.

Here are some other collections of 10 types of people jokes: 

Straight Dope Message Board

There are 10 kinds of people... (extended edition!) 

10 kinds of people

You've probably seen this joke on a t-shirt:

There are 10 types of people in the world.  Those who understand binary, and those who don't. 

I think it's time this became like the lightbulb joke: a source of almost infinite variation.  Or maybe 10 kinds of variation.   

So here are some more jokes, original with me as far as I know, except where noted otherwise.

From Gordon Mohr (or maybe somebody else before him):

There are 11 types of people in the world. Those who understand unary, and those who don't.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who think this joke is about ternary.

There is 10 type of person in the world. Those who write numbers big endian.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who like garden path sentences.

There are IO types of people in the world. Those who like typing the moons of Jupiter in capitals, and those who don't.

The following joke is due to Chris Jefferson. 

There are 10 types of people in the world, and each of them knows they are counting in base 10.

Here's a mashup with the lightbulb joke

How many people does it take to change a lightbulb? 

10. One to change the lightbulb and one to make a joke about binary.

And if those are not geeky enough for you ...

Gurer ner 10 glcrf bs crbcyr va gur jbeyq. Gubfr jub haqrefgnaq ebg13, naq gubfr jub qba'g.

And if that last one was really too geeky for you, here's a variant:

Gurer ner 10 glcrf bs crbcyr va gur jbeyq. Gubfr jub haqrefgnaq rot13, naq gubfr jub qba'g.

And if that is still too geeky for you:

Gurer ner 10 glcrf bs crbcyr va gur jbeyq. Gubfr jub haqrefgnaq ebg 13, and those who don't understand rot13

I'm sorry, I'm not going to explain rot13 though, you can Google it. 

The Incredible Procrastination Energy Machine

Good news... I am exerting incredible amounts of energy avoiding doing the really important stuff I really need to do. 

Better news... I've invented a way to capture this energy, thereby providing unlimited free energy and solving the world's energy crisis. 

Bad news... I'm the three hundred and seventh person to invent this. Like the other 306, when it becomes my job to sort out the low level details, I'll do something else instead.

Dear UPenn Engineering, Please read my open letter to Judge Business School

Dear U Penn Engineering

Like Judge Business School, you use a third party site to obtain your references for applicants to your graduate programs.

The appalling nature of this software, its lack of usability, displays that it seems you hold in contempt the time and energy of the people providing a service to you by writing references.

I've ranted about this before, so I refer you to that open letter.  Cambridge quickly got back to me to say they would reconsider their processes, so I hope you will too.

One differences from Cambridge.  First, I don't know the data protection provisions in the USA so you may ignore that part.

But here's a new point which was true of Judge too, but only just occurred to me.  Why did I get a request from a great University like U Penn, with zero contact information for U Penn?   The only contacts are for the firm supplying the reference software.   But maybe I would like to find out what the programme is, and a point of contact if there is anything I need to discuss with a staff member at U Penn for any reason.    Shocking.

A final oddity.   Having created and uploaded headed notepaper, as requested, when I preview the document it is overwritten, making both my University crest look ugly and the overprinted information illegible.

Best Wishes

Ian Gent

Asking for a pardon for Alan Turing alone is a shameful act

Today, a number of famous scientists have published a letter in the Daily Telegraph  requesting a posthumous pardon for Alan Turing's conviction of homosexuality. I think this is a shameful act, and these great scientists should have known better.

Turing once outran an Olympic Silver Medal runner

I have very mild tangential connections with some of them, very very mild.  I met Doug Gurr a few times while he was doing his PhD at the same time as me, before he moved on to greater and better things.  Tim Gowers is a friend of a friend.  And my father Hubert Gent and Martin Rees were in the rather small UK Radio Astronomy community in the 60s and 70s.    Oh, and Lord Grade worked with Morecambe and Wise, who both I and my daughter love.   But I hope that if I had very close connections with all these people, it would not stop me criticising them for asking for a pardon for Turing.

You might think I'm against retrospective pardons and apologies, but that is not my point at all.

And before I go on, let me say I am a huge fan of Alan Turing.

I work in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. When lecturing on Artificial Intelligence, I often give my reasons for regarding Turing as my hero.   He was a key founder of theoretical  computer science with the Universal Turing Machine.  He was a key founder of practical computer science, with his work on the Bombe during the war and on the ACE machine afterwards.   He was a founder of theoretical Artificial Intelligence when he wrote about what became known as the Turing Test. And he was a founder of practical Artificial Intelligence when he wrote the first chess program for the full game of chess, which in fact had to be run using pencil and paper as it was too sophisticated for existing computers.  Oh, and in between all these things, he played a major part in winning the war with his codebreaking.

I regard him as one of the three greatest British scientists of all time.  I think Newton and Darwin and him are the great three, and would not wish to choose between them.   There have been many other great scientists, but these three essentially founded major world disciplines, as well as having the most astonishing scientific insights.   When I became professor at St Andrews, the University gave me a book as memento, and I asked for Turing's collected papers on Artificial Intelligence.

If you still don't believe I'm a Turing-fan, let me tell you my one and only twitter username is turingfan.

After all that, why do I think nobody should ask for Alan Turing to be pardoned?   Actually, I don't think that.  I believe - very strongly - that it is shameful to ask for a pardon for Alan Turing alone.   Alan Turing was convicted of what was then a crime, and I don't believe there is doubt that he was guilty.   Many many other people were convicted of similar crimes which would not be crimes now.  All of them deserve pardons or none of them do.

Why should Turing benefit from a pardon and none of the others? Because he was famous?  Because he was a great scientist?  Because he helped win the war?  Are any of these reasons for pardoning somebody for a real crime?  Of course not!

The reason to pardon Turing is  that we now believe homosexuality is not criminal and that it should not have been in the past.   If we believe that - and if we believe that retrospective pardons are useful - we should pardon everybody convicted of crimes of homosexuality which would not now be criminal.   To single out Turing to benefit is shaming, and I'm sorry to say that with most of the signatories of the letter being scientists, it is shaming to the scientific community.  

If you must ask for a pardon for Turing, there is only one way to do it. Ask for a pardon for ALL those convicted of similar offences, Alan Turing and many many others.   Use Turing as a poster boy example if you wish, but never ask for a pardon for him alone.

There must be many people alive now who were convicted of offences related to homosexuality.  They all deserve a pardon.  They would even benefit from one.  Ignoring them and asking for a pardon for Alan Turing is shameful.