{"id":3059,"date":"2011-03-30T09:25:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T14:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2011-03-30T09:34:18","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T14:34:18","slug":"dueling-linguists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3059","title":{"rendered":"Dueling linguists"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Ian Sherr, \"Apple, Microsoft Hire Linguists to Duel Over App Store Name<\/a>\", WSJ 3\/30\/2011:<\/p>\n

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) have both hired linguists to serve as experts in the tech titan's ongoing battle over whether or not the government can grant a trademark for the term \"app store.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Microsoft's expert is Ron Butters, who is quoted as writing that \"The compound noun app store means simply 'store at which apps are offered for sale,' which is merely a definition of the thing itself — a generic characterization\".<\/p>\n

Apple's linguist is Robert Leonard, who \"who asserted that the electronics giant's 'App Store' was a proper noun and deserved to be trademarked, even though the words are generic when separated\".<\/p>\n

There's some useful (though partisan) discussion of the history here<\/a>, and the filings in the case appear to be indexed here<\/a>, where you can find\u00a0Robert Leonard's declaration<\/a> and Ron Butters' rebuttal<\/a>.\u00a0In addition, Microsoft has filed a sort of post-mortem of \"app store\" hits in Lexis\/Nexis, by Nathaniel Durrance, \u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Curiously, Profs. Butters and Leonard are also engaged on opposite sides of a current criminal case. According to Beth Hundsdorfer, \"Expert ties threats, graffiti to Coleman<\/a>\", St. Louis News-Democrat, 3\/19\/2011:<\/p>\n

A forensic linguist testified Friday that emailed threats, threatening letters and spray-painted graffiti at the murder scene were \"consistent\" with documents written by murder suspect Christopher Coleman.<\/span><\/p>\n

Circuit Judge Milton Wharton will decide whether Robert Leonard, a forensic linguist at Hofstra University in New York, will testify at Coleman's upcoming murder trial.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonard testified that people have certain patterns in their written words that allow a forensic linguist to determine whether documents may have the same author. […]<\/span><\/p>\n

The defense announced their intention to call an opposing expert Ron Butters, a former professor at Duke University and forensic linguist, but O'Gara stated he was not available to testify at Friday's hearing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wharton reserved ruling on whether the forensic linguists' testimony will be heard at trial, but scheduled the final pre-trial hearing in the case for April 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe that it's time for Shaenon K. Garrity to resume her Narbonic<\/a> strip, which went into hiatus at the end of 2006. Or perhaps she could give Antonio Smith, Forensic Linguist<\/a>, his own spin-off series. Though this time, perhaps, a little less emphasis on correcting real or imagined usage errors, and a bit more on (say) defeating legions of Zombie Rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Ian Sherr, \"Apple, Microsoft Hire Linguists to Duel Over App Store Name\", WSJ 3\/30\/2011: Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) have both hired linguists to serve as experts in the tech titan's ongoing battle over whether or not the government can grant a trademark for the term \"app store.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-the-law","category-linguistics-in-the-funny-papers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}